


The Tale of the Diplomat

by Guede



Series: The Book of the Green Field [10]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, M/M, Superspy Inzaghi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 07:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4616559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the eve of a French invasion, Filippo embarks on a final diplomatic mission to the French king, and in his party is the mysterious former <i>condottiere</i> Christian Vieri.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tale of the Diplomat

**Author's Note:**

> Set in an Alternate World France loosely based on the year 1499. Thank you to (all LJ usernames) lilianna76, tall_tree, rose_of_rouen and saltlemonnlime for the research help

The first impression Filippo had of Vieri was one broad shoulder, massive and rounded as a mountain hilltop but with an odd, angular protrusion from its side. It led into a back broad enough to have borne the weight of two full sacks of olives, and already stooped at the top as if it had spent most of its life doing exactly that. But the hint of a scar showed across the back of the neck, and the fist loosely propped on one hip had calluses padding the parts where the hilt of a sword and not the handle of a hoe would sit.

Filippo paused, assessing the obstacle, and then heard the raised voices. That protrusion emerged from behind the shoulder so the rest of the face was visible, and then he understood that the man was blocking him from the general of the Milanese army. So he slipped up on the other side of the man, keeping to the shadow of the door. He was quiet, but the man turned anyway, with the slow smooth movement of the professional soldier, to flick an assessing glance over him. Then he slouched against the jamb, the candlelight drawing a yellow hand over a brown smear of dirt on his cheek. He muttered something in a strange accent, and a moment later Zlatan reared up before the doorway, his expression half-snarling as he stared down at Filippo. “You’ve got till I’m done with Signore Inzaghi to fix it, and if it’s not, you can run back to the useless bastard who got you on your poor mother, and _Vieri_ can have your job,” Zlatan snapped.

He meant the comment for the pale-faced, shaking man who hurriedly barged out past Filippo, but his gaze remained fixed on Filippo as he spoke. And then afterward, as Zlatan withdrew back into the room, the rest of his body pivoting towards the paper-strewn table shoved up against the far wall. He finally looked away when one of the sheets there fluttered, the crispness of the noise more than compensating for its lack of volume.

Other men were still in the room, so it seemed that Zlatan had been winding down his nightly conference with his officers. They were also in the process of leaving, but a few paused to have an extra word with Zlatan; he answered them calmly enough, but it was apparent to everyone that his temper was still simmering. Filippo paid less attention to that than he did to the way the other men took that, whether they seemed truly frightened or had a morass of resentment beneath their veneer of awe. Most fell into the former category, but one or two—none of them an appointee Zlatan had made—were of the latter.

And then there was the man at the door. Now Filippo could see his face, with the nose flattened across the bridge, the heavy brows and the jaw like a piece of forged iron. He was watching the whole proceedings with as much detachment as…as Filippo assumed he’d possessed prior to being startled by the coolness in this one’s gaze. Since adjusting for Filippo’s presence, he hadn’t moved, and didn’t look as if he intended to, although Zlatan had made his desire for a great reduction in company quite clear. At that point Filippo still had not attached so much as a name to the man.

Zlatan finished with the last man importuning him, and then stood back on his trailing foot to scour the room with his gaze. His eyes ran across Filippo, then the doorway, and Filippo sank back a little. But then Zlatan shook his head. He glanced down at the table, and then back up at the man beside Filippo, a smile sliding about his mouth that was close-lipped but with a gleaming promise of teeth.

“Think you could do better?” he said.

The man shifted then, pushing off the jamb with an elbow. He straightened his back but bent his head to avoid having the top of it graze the underside of the doorway. “I don’t have to think about it.”

His voice didn’t equivocate, either in its sureness or in the slight grate of its accent, which Filippo hadn’t yet placed, but Zlatan seemed merely amused. He raised an eyebrow at the man in a way that was very reminiscent of Paolo, then half-turned away to put one hand on the table, where a draft was making the papers flutter. “Well, would you want to?”

The words apparently carried more than their bare meaning for the man, who folded his arms over his chest and also looked away, his lip curling. In doing so he happened to face Filippo again, and this time he looked Filippo over more carefully but more predictably: men had been examining Filippo that way all his life, with the same curiosity in their eyes at his slight build and secure—if not high—station. They found it a mystery, but almost invariably instead of asking the reason, they settled for some assumption that suited their outlook on the world, and then never thought any more about it. 

“Marco should be coming back now. Want to go give him a hand for the night?” Zlatan phrased it as a question, and glanced at the man as if he was genuinely interested in the answer, but he still was hardly that unsure.

He was rough-mannered but his intelligence was undeniable, and by this time Filippo had managed to acquaint himself with Zlatan’s favored ways. This stranger, whoever he was, was enough to be a worry to Zlatan as well as deserving of a respect Zlatan showed very few people. In private or in public, but since everyone else had left the room, the display was even more peculiar. Since his return from England, Filippo’s status as a diplomat had become fairly well-known. Zlatan’s discomfort with him was much less so, but he at least knew of it and thus was suspicious of any attempt by the other man to openly inform him of any maneuverings.

Filippo doubted that the man at the doorway knew much of that, but he could have noted the sudden tension between them easily enough. In response to Zlatan’s question he nodded curtly before silently withdrawing. He went backwards two paces before turning, and even then he kept his body angled so he could pivot to face either way in a heartbeat, Filippo saw.

“Shut the door. The window leaks enough,” Zlatan said.

That meant for Filippo, though Zlatan had his head down to study some map. He still presented his side to Filippo, and stood so Filippo would have to take up the position next to the window—which was glassed, and the French army was still on the other side of the Mont Genèvre pass. But on this side was Italy, and the fact that it was Milan soil wasn’t quite a guarantee of safety.

Then again, Filippo’s personal safety didn’t concern him except in that he needed to be alive in order to convey certain pieces of information to certain people. And that was the cause of the annoyed sigh he suppressed as he did as Zlatan had asked. He checked the latch, moved a chair so upon opening, the door would glance off it, and then crossed the room. “Louis sent a reply.”

“Did you get a good look at him?” A moment later Zlatan lifted his head from the maps, his teeth edging out as he smiled. “No, the one who just left. That’s Christian Vieri.”

Filippo paused, letting several lines of thought run through his head. “Vieri. His father’s from Prato. He was quite a good _condottiere_ for…you must have come up against him.”

“A few times. We never actually fought each other—it was always settled beforehand, and he never went back on a bargain. Even though his lord did, one time.” Zlatan flicked a piece of chalk into his hand, then slowly twisted it between his fingers so that Filippo could see the dark red smudge it left along the side of his forefinger. He pursed his lips, his mood having turned serious again as he returned to the maps. “He broke with the bastard over something else and left a few days before. Lucky for him, since I ended up slaughtering most of his men.”

“He doesn’t hold a grudge?” Filippo ventured. Vieri’s name was known over the whole peninsula, and beyond into Spain—he’d briefly fought in the _reconquista_ \--but his Italian campaigns had all been in the south or the east, mostly involving the Venetian Republic. Till recently that region had been beyond Filippo’s effective scope, so though he’d heard a great deal, he couldn’t say with much certainty what was truth and what was mere embellishment.

The papers before Zlatan showed the various Alpine passes the French might use. Trustworthy intelligence had reported that Louis had settled for Mont Genèvre, but it seemed as if Zlatan himself still wasn’t willing to gamble on that. He ran his fingertips over another usable pass, the oils from them slightly streaking the ink: some of the notations had been made quite recently. “Apparently not. He showed up and offered to work for us. I sent to Paolo about it, but in the meantime I’m letting him stay with some of the Swedes.”

Mellberg’s men. Larsson was back in Milan, having expressed a preference for guarding the rear due to his pregnant wife, and no one had had much of an objection. In the seven years since the Sforzas had been thrown out, Paolo had proved to be a popular leader and was about as secure as any head of an Italian state could be—which was still questionable. The Sforzas had purged and purged again the Milanese nobility, to the point that in order to be able to run the city, Paolo had been forced to accept some of the very families who’d walked by his father’s body as it’d hung before the ducal palace. They were always a menace, and with both Nesta and Zlatan out campaigning, everyone felt better having a military man of Larsson’s competence and cool-headed thinking remain in Milan.

But his colleagues, while possessing unimpeachable records in battle, were unfortunately much less equipped in the arts of diplomacy. Mellberg in particular had made Filippo’s work difficult with his fits of temper on more than one occasion.

“You don’t like that,” Zlatan said, straightening. He would remember, and as the light in his eye indicated, appreciate the awkwardness of Filippo’s position. Though of course he preferred to savor rather than sympathize; after all, he was the most temperamental of all, and the most important. “Well, if it makes you feel better, he and Olof have already annoyed each other, so Olof’s looking for a reason to kill him.”

“Many of your men will have heard of Vieri, and maybe even have fought under him,” Filippo finally said. He was careful to keep his tone neutral, though Zlatan’s chronic flippancy always irritated him. Moreover, he wanted to discuss the message from the French, which he would have thought would have the greatest priority…and be important enough to keep Zlatan from playing little political games on the eve of a war. But his wants weren’t factors anyway, and so he kept them pushed to the side and concentrated on the problems as they presented themselves. “And why is he here?”

This time Zlatan laughed. He turned his head, letting the noise break on his shoulder, and then tossed up his head. The laugh ended in a sharp snort. “Oh, there’s some who have. I’ve already been down talking to them, trying to get something on the man…but nothing. He doesn’t seem too interested in talking to them either, though they’ve tried.”

He looked at Filippo with his brows raised, as if expecting a challenge. Why the man always thought Filippo would be surprised he was as careful as any good leader of men should be was a puzzle Filippo hadn’t yet had the time to pursue. As was his background, which was as much an enigma in parts as Vieri’s was, but Filippo didn’t think the comparison would be politic to mention. “I’d expect they’d know more than I would.”

“Really?” Zlatan went still except for his eyes, which flicked closely over Filippo’s face.

Filippo looked back steadily enough, but was unable to help the slight pause on his part. “When he was active was before I was able to follow such things. He disappeared just as I finally had the resources, and since he wasn’t playing a role anywhere with anyone, it seemed a waste of effort to look into his absence.”

“I suppose,” Zlatan said after a moment. He glanced at the chalk in his hand, then abruptly pushed back from the table. After dropping the chalk in its box, he continued backwards till he was standing by a tray of food set on a sideboard, which had hardly been touched. “Otherwise you wouldn’t look so uncomfortable about admitting it. Cheer up, you’ve got a chance to fix that—he says he doesn’t want a command, but wants to work in a more personal capacity. Says he knows France well.”

It took Filippo a moment to relax enough to really think through that simple statement. The French army was close enough now to work on even his nerves. “Does he.”

“I got a copy of the message, too.” Zlatan picked at the meat, then settled for the hunk of cheese beside it. He ate a few pieces of it, chewing thoroughly, before unstrapping a flask from his hip and drinking from that instead of from the glass of wine on the tray. “It’s your usual high-flying nonsense, isn’t it? His army’s over there and he’s coming this way. Louis’s no Charles—he wants a fight.”

“Charles was willing to allow Paolo to help pay to ship his men to Naples instead of crossing Milan with them because his claim was to Naples. Louis’ claim is to Milan itself,” Filippo said. He found Zlatan’s caution with the food commendable, but also worrying, and made a note to look into the service before he went to bed. “When exactly did Vieri appear?”

The quick changing of subjects was one of Zlatan’s favored techniques, but it was hardly unique to him. Filippo stared steadily back till the corner of Zlatan’s mouth quirked. Then the other man turned back to his meal. “You want any of this? The wine’s awful, more like vinegar, but the rest isn’t bad.” He pushed another chunk of cheese into his mouth, then looked at Filippo as he chewed and swallowed. “I know why the king of France is sitting at the damn border, by the way.”

An apology, Filippo decided after a moment, would only irritate the other man even more. So instead he settled for merely shaking his head. “I already ate.”

Zlatan studied him a little longer before putting down the cheese. The man wiped his fingers on a napkin provided with the tray, then stepped back to frown at the wall. He absently tucked a few strands behind his ear. “Vieri says he knows Paolo, but he didn’t want to send along a private message. Didn’t even look interested.” After another moment, Zlatan screwed the cap back onto his flask, then put that away as he turned to look at Filippo. “Relax, would you? If you died, then I’d have to do all the negotiating myself, and I hate that.”

“You don’t think there’s any point left to that,” Filippo observed.

“I said I think Louis wants a fight. I never said there weren’t going to be more negotiations about something, and you know that. You’re just irritated at me.” Smiling again, Zlatan wandered back to the table. He pushed aside the topmost map, then pulled out one that’d been drawn on good vellum instead of on paper. “And you know you can’t keep doing this by letter. Louis is going to use _that_ as an excuse, that we aren’t treating seriously with him, if we keep that up. You have to go see him yourself.”

As he spoke, his tone and demeanor changed. He grew cooler, distant, his eyes looking at the map but possibly seeing the actual cliffs and rocks of the pass it described. He still could surprise Filippo when he detached himself so completely from the situation, with the objectivity of someone far older, with a cynicism that ran far deeper than his usual jibes. When Zlatan was in that sort of mood, it was very easy to understand why Cesare Borgia preferred to threaten Milan’s southern border when Nesta was there to meet him. And rather more difficult to remember Zlatan was barely thirty, and not even Italian.

At any rate, he’d failed to correct Adriana on his age at the birthday party she’d given him, Filippo reminded himself. “I know. That’s why I’m here to see you.”

“Vieri was asking for a scouting position, actually. I’ve already had him tell me about France, but I don’t really want to have my strategy based on his word. Not till I talk to Paolo about him, and that won’t be till I’m back in Milan.” Zlatan tipped his head and watched as his fingers slipped beneath the map, then flipped it towards Filippo, who just caught it. Then he glanced up, his mouth a thin short line. “You want a proper escort, I’ll probably have to send back for it. I don’t want to spare that many of my men.”

“I’d rather travel light. Five or six good horsemen should be fine.” Most of the time the pomp and circumstance of rank tended to be a hindrance, and especially when Filippo had to travel. He wasn’t especially charming, he knew, but he had learned to make up for that with speed and breadth of knowledge. And he had also accepted that attempting to camouflage his flaws only brought them out more, so presenting an honest front—in regards to that, anyway—did him better credit. “Are you offering Vieri to me as a guide?”

It was a good minute or so before Zlatan answered, preoccupied as he was with studying Filippo’s reaction. The corner of his mouth was twitching again, but it was unclear from the expression in his eyes whether that was due to good humor or to a darker emotion. And in the end, he merely rolled one shoulder. “You can take him if you want. I don’t know what to do with him, and I don’t have the time to figure that out. And aside from the officers, you can pick whoever else you want. Horses, too. Just let me know before you go.”

Filippo let himself smile there. “Feeling sorry for me?”

“As bad as you traveled on the way here?” Zlatan retorted, grinning. His eyes were still cool, and in an instant the rest of his face had rearranged itself to match. “No. I don’t. Somebody like you, I never feel sorry for. I just want you to get this diplomatic nonsense over with, so Louis will march and I can take care of him.”

It wasn’t quite an insult, and why that was so, Filippo would have to consider more closely later. But the words didn’t lie easily against his skin, and he startled himself with how much effort he needed to keep his composure in the face of them.

“Fair enough,” he finally said. “I’ll have a list for you in the morning. Now, France and the diplomatic nonsense I’ll be doing. I have a few suggestions.”

* * *

Nothing in the supply train or in the staff who supplied Zlatan with his meals—when he didn’t scrounge them himself, like some urchin in the marketplace, a cook half-heartedly complained—immediately struck Filippo as odd. He checked with his various informants on other matters, then set one or two to keep an eye on the food as a precaution anyway. Then he finally set about getting his own meal, as he hadn’t broken fast yet.

Filippo carried his food into the officers’ stables, which hadn’t existed till a few days ago. The dangerous creaking of the walls indicated that the building could use a little more work, but after a good look at the joints and ceiling beams, Filippo decided to chance it. He found a place in the corner and then ate as he considered first the men, since he freely acknowledged he wasn’t a terribly good judge of horses. Peasant stock normally weren’t, since if they ever had the chance to encounter decently-bred beasts, it was too late in life to develop much beyond a working understanding of the animal—curious that Zlatan was renowned as a fantastic horseman. He certainly wasn’t any higher-bred than Filippo was, and probably lower, for all his eccentricities; Filippo’s parents at least had been able to pay for their sons to be taken into the town notary’s household.

The sound of a boot scuffing against wood shook Filippo out of his thoughts. He went still, quickly reviewing where he was and what he had on him, and whoever had entered the stables continued on to stop at a stall only a few yards away. It was a small group—he picked out two voices muttering to each other, and then a third coughing—and from the heavy, regular tread they were all soldiers.

“He’s shorter than you said.” The cougher spoke and revealed himself to be Vieri, with that distinctive accent.

“He’s not shoed. Threw two yesterday, and I haven’t had time to take him to the smith.” His companion spoke ruefully. Good-humored but wistful. “Won’t have to, now…I forgot about that. Sorry, I’ll—”

“Never mind.”

“No, let me pay for it at least. I’m a lousy dice-player, but never let it be said that I wasn’t a good loser.”

Vieri laughed: a surprisingly full-throated, careless sound. His other companion did as well, but less loudly, preferring to tease the self-proclaimed loser about his gambling luck. There was some more discussion, less amusing, but in the end Vieri refused the payment for the shoes. He let a trace of steel into his voice then and the other two fell silent, in the way that men did when confronted with some power they knew was greater than them. A moment later they were chatting again, but the talk had lost much of its lightness.

It seemed as if Vieri had noticed, as soon afterward he softened an order to leave him alone with a joke about them needing to get back to some woman before they lost out on her, too. The other two noisily left, waking several of the horses so the beasts neighed and restlessly stamped about in their stalls for several minutes afterward.

Filippo had relaxed once he’d identified Vieri’s voice, but hadn’t resumed eating, or in fact moved at all. So he was quite reasonably startled, he believed, when Vieri suddenly appeared in the doorway to his stall.

“Heard enough?” he said. He leaned against the lower half-door, his hands loosely clasped and hanging down over that. Half his face was brilliantly lit in the light of the growing dawn, but the other half was as dark as night.

His shadow, Filippo realized, and barely prevented himself from throwing a rueful look up at the wall behind him. The makeshift work had left large cracks between the planks, and they were letting in the light so it came from behind him. When Vieri wasn’t blocking its way, Filippo’s shadow must stretch all the way into the aisle. Careless of him, and never mind that he was tired after a long journey; he should be taking that sort of detail into account without thinking about it by now.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. I didn’t realize I was listening to a private conversation till it was too late to leave.” Filippo moved carefully, aware of the habits and nerves of veterans, as he reached for the plate on the hay-bale beside him. He kept his hands in plain sight at all times and avoided quick movements.

Vieri watched him. Not closely, or with any particular interest in his face, but somehow Filippo still received the impression that little escaped the other man. “It was nothing, just idle chat,” he said. He rolled one shoulder, then absently tugged at the collar of his heavy leather doublet. It was plain, with several scores and as many carefully mended seams to hint at the use it’d seen. A little old-fashioned as well. “I hear you’re the diplomat around here.”

After a moment, Filippo finished closing his fingers around the edges of his plate. He picked it up and moved it to his lap, and then thoroughly chewed and swallowed a piece of bread before he looked at Vieri again. He was lucky in his timing, as he just glimpsed the edge of surprise and possibly respect before the other man slid commendably thick shields over his eyes. “I serve under the Duke, but I’m not of much importance.”

Filippo had eaten several more mouthfuls before Vieri moved again, shifting off the half-door to stand back. The man’s shoulders remained slightly forward, as if he were carrying some invisible load on them. “I’m sorry. I’m Christian. And you are…”

Many different responses presented themselves, ranging from noncommittal to challenging, and of them several would have been effective, but to separate ends. The bit of meat Filippo had just poked into his mouth gave him a few moments to consider the likeliest, and then the overall strategy. “We almost met once before. In Bergamo. I came to the town right after you’d gone through the countryside.”

Vieri grew very still, and also curiously opaque, as if he were turning to stone before Filippo’s eyes. Then he looked away, the visible corner of his mouth flattening under some tension. “Did you have family around there?”

“No. We’re from further south.” After another mouthful, Filippo decided he’d given his stomach enough and began to bundle up the remaining food into a saddlebag for later. He needed sleep more badly, given his moment of carelessness, and could finish pacifying his hunger afterward. “Filippo Inzaghi. Do you know much about horses?”

The other man looked back at him. He didn’t move much, Vieri: just a swivel of the head, and the rest of his body didn’t break line in the least. He had more training, or at least more discipline, than the usual mercenary—and either he lacked a sense of humor or he was more suspicious than Filippo, as there wasn’t a trace of derision in his eyes. “What are you looking for?”

“Speed over comfort.” He’d never be a good rider, Filippo had been told once a long time ago, but he had a certain tenacity to him that would probably do. In practice it was rather more a measure of his tolerance for bodily aches, but the prediction had more or less turned out true. He wasn’t good with horses, but he could stay on them, and staying on the damn things more often than not turned out to be more crucial than pretty tricks or smooth grace. “Any unassigned horse…I would like to avoid interfering with any more private discussions, if possible.”

Vieri lifted his lip then, his eyes partly shut against the light that also made his teeth gleam like metal. He still had all or nearly all of them, and they were very white, an even greater rarity. “If there’s a good one and it’s taken, you can just give me a few minutes and it’ll be untaken.”

“I’d rather not cause unnecessary interference,” Filippo said after a moment. He slung the saddlebag over his shoulder, then put his hands to his knees and slowly got up, aware that his back hadn’t yet recovered from the journey here.

“Not a gambling man?” Vieri asked when he was already turning away. He did that as he had earlier, keeping himself angled so his back wasn’t entirely to Filippo.

Was gambling a problem? It was endemic in armies, to the point where the sensible thing was to let it be, but if the officers were more worried about their debts than about their upcoming battles…no, Filippo had asked about that when he’d been making the rounds of his informants. Suppressing a grimace, Filippo ducked his head and ran his hand over the back of his neck, trying to stir his sluggish blood into quicker thought.

By the time he’d worked his way out of the stall, Vieri was a few yards away. The man moved with deliberation, but that seemed more due to his concentration on the horses before him, and not to any care he was taking to not leave Filippo behind. For all his lack of humor, perhaps he’d taken the assumption Filippo had offered and had written Filippo off as another ill-informed bureaucrat. Even if Filippo’s role in Paolo’s administration was more well-known now, most people still gave him less credit than he was due. They found it a little difficult to believe that someone as ill-graced as him could play the role of the dashing ambassador.

“This one is all right, but he might be too spirited for you,” Vieri said, nodding towards a dun stallion. He spoke dispassionately, with no edge to his eyes, but he did glance back at Filippo. Then he gestured to another one, a slightly shorter sorrel. “Slower. But nicer.”

Filippo ignored the glance and looked at the horses. The dun in fact seemed to be sleeping, while the sorrel was moving about, its head rising and lowering as it confronted them. “The dun, then. He’s not attached?”

Vieri looked at him again, longer and with a twist to the mouth. Then he stepped away, absently pulling one hand back through his hair. “He is, but I suppose Il Genio won’t make too much of a fuss about giving him up to you. It’s not his favorite, and anyway, he’ll want to see you along.”

“What makes you say that?” Filippo asked after a moment. The saddlebag shifted on his shoulder, its edge digging into his collarbone. He adjusted it, then left his arm lying over it, hooking his hand across the back of his neck. “Have you heard some rumor?”

“No. No, as far as people talk, you two get along fine. I just remember him—he’s not too different at thirty than he was at twenty…twenty-one, however old he was.” When Vieri shrugged, he made the whole back of his coat ripple. His collar pulled away from his neck, showing a little more of the scar Filippo had noted earlier. “And anyway, it makes sense to want to get to the attack already, and settle the French before Borgia settles with Louis and catches Milan in a pincer.”

Cesare Borgia’s ambitions were common enough knowledge, Filippo decided after a moment. He relaxed the grip of his fingers on his neck. “So you don’t believe much in diplomats. It seems a popular opinion among _condottieres_.”

“I meant no insult,” Vieri said. This time he did smile, a quick thin sliver of a curve. “Neither does Il Mago—Il Genio, pardon me, I understand he has a new name now. It’s just good generals never like too many voices in the camp. It tempts your men to listen to the weak and the spineless, and then you lose when you don’t deserve to.”

“Are you meaning that as an insult now?” For his part, Filippo meant the neutrality of his voice. He wasn’t personally engaged so the man could say whatever he liked—what Vieri continued to say was what interested him.

Vieri paused, his mouth parted. Then he looked away and that odd spell came over him again, as if he were drawing a dimming veil between himself and the rest of the world. When he spoke again, he’d wiped his voice clean of its trace of animation. “I apologize. I suppose you don’t lack for opinions on military strategy.”

“I don’t consider such matters. I don’t have that responsibility or that knowledge,” Filippo said. He looked at the dun again, and caught it staring back at him. Then it abruptly tossed its head, its nostrils flaring; the dun had settled, and when Filippo edged close to peer over the half-door to its stall, he spied a small bundle of fur sleeping in one corner. Some cat, which possibly had been why the horse had been moving about a few moments before.

After another wary look to the horse, Filippo settled against the door. Horses seemed to find him as difficult to like as people did, so though he didn’t have much skill with the beasts, he did know to check for any obvious revulsion. But the dun merely regarded him, bits of straw sticking out on either side of its slowly grinding jaws. It did raise its head when he put his arm over the door, but after a few seconds, it blew out a damp breath and went back to eating.

“It’ll do,” he muttered under his breath.

“He.” Vieri had his head up again, the veil exchanged for a faint look of amusement. When he wasn’t trying to hide from whatever haunted him, he stood out in the same manner that Zlatan did, effortlessly commanding attention like the sun in the sky. It was easy enough to see why he had the reputation he did, and why Zlatan wasn’t interested in having him in the camp. “He’s got a prick almost as long as your forearm.”

Filippo felt his mouth twitch before he could help himself. “I’m not interested in such things.”

“Your interests are very limited, it sounds like,” Vieri said. He took a step forward, looking at Filippo, and then crossed the rest of the way to the stall while looking at the horse. He had thick scars over the backs of his hands, not all of them from blades: one or two looked the result of burns. “You are going over into France, aren’t you?”

“The Duke believes that all possible efforts should be made for a peaceful resolution,” Filippo replied. He felt the saddlebag start to slide again and pulled it back up his shoulder. “Why?”

Vieri abruptly drummed his fingers along the top of the stall door, startling the dun into a neigh. He looked at the animal and it stopped in the middle of its outburst, its head thrown up. The two of them stared at each other for several seconds before the horse turned away, retreating as far back into the stall as it could. Curiously enough, Vieri didn’t seem pleased by its reaction; his fingers curled to press against the rough wood of the door and his mouth twisted again, almost snarling. Then he looked down at the hay and his expression smoothed.

“I can speak French, and I know the area where you’re going. I can get you there as fast as you need to go and bring you back in whatever condition you’d like.” His lips were moving smoothly, but his voice still jerked and grumbled with whatever sudden fit of unease had seized him. He drummed his fingers again, not quite as loudly as before, but loud enough to wake the cat and send it slipping through a hole in the far wall. “And I’ll do it for room and board. I’m not interested in money. I have enough waiting for me when I’m done here.”

That…was rather more direct than Filippo was accustomed to, even with professional soldiers. He stared at Vieri for several seconds before he realized what he was doing and recollected himself. “Someone of your experience and standing—”

“Zlatan doesn’t want me here any more than he wants you, and for the same reasons. If I do stay he’ll find some way to keep me quiet and away so I won’t distract his men. Sensible man.” Those broad shoulders hunched up, then slumped as Vieri pushed himself off the door. His teeth were showing, but not quite in a smile. “I’m not a diplomat, so I don’t speak like one. I don’t like to. But what I say I can do, I do. So do I have a job?”

“Why with me? I understand…you’re an acquaintance of the Duke as well. Surely you could apply to him for some duty more fitting of your past,” Filippo finally said.

Vieri’s eyes darkened and grew distant, in the way of those—not only soldiers—who’d been through a long siege. But when he spoke, the words seemed to come easily enough to him. “Paolo knows my past well enough. Anyway, I haven’t seen Paolo since before his family was slaughtered by the Sforzas, and it would be…rude, I think you’d say, if I tried to rest on such an old acquaintance.” He took another step back, so he was standing in the sunlight again, his hair blocking out his eyes in a black shadow. “And I’m tired of Italy, of fighting here.”

“I don’t intend to do any fighting in France.” The man’s eagerness alarmed Filippo, on grounds of both instinct and experience, but on the other hand, its very strangeness made it an interesting puzzle. Probably the simplest explanation, as was usual, was the best, but…Vieri didn’t like subterfuge and that seemed genuine enough.

It seemed that their minds were running in the same direction, as Vieri smiled again, without humor. “I don’t like the French either. If what you’re looking for is somebody who won’t waste time dawdling, and then won’t interfere in your business, then I’m perfect. I like travelling, but don’t care much for the stops along the way.”

“You don’t like much,” Filippo couldn’t help observing.

“About as much as interests you.” Vieri raised his eyebrows, absently rubbing his hand over his hip. A common habit among mercenaries, who never seemed comfortable without a sword somewhere near and a fight closer yet. Though so far, Vieri appeared to have enough sense to control himself when he cared to.

After a moment, Filippo turned back to the horse. “I’ll try it out later. This afternoon.”

The beast looked at him, then came warily forward, its head turned towards Vieri, though Filippo didn’t hear the other man moving. It dipped down to lip at the bucket of water nailed to one wall, then abruptly jerked up its head with a sharp splutter. A few drops from its muzzle found their way to Filippo’s face so he reflexively closed his eyes.

“Fair enough,” he heard Vieri say. And then he didn’t need to turn to know that the other man had left.

* * *

Filippo eventually made it back to the rooms designated for him in some local inn. He had a short nap, worked on a report to send to Paolo for about an hour, and then had a longer nap. It was early afternoon when he saw Zlatan again, to settle his traveling plans and to discuss Vieri.

“I like him, actually,” Zlatan said. He put his hand down on the table, splaying his fingers so his thumb slightly squashed the wax seal he’d just put on a letter, and looked up at Filippo. His mouth was still and his eyes were cool and serious. “He’s not an idiot.”

“Did you talk about going with me with him?” After he’d finished sliding his reports into the thin leather bag, Filippo held out his hand.

Zlatan paused before he handed over his letter, which told Filippo already that it was for Paolo. Why he was always so reluctant was puzzling to Filippo, since he never wrote anything personal, and what he did write was in terse—if surprisingly good—Latin. “No. I just told you he’s no fool. And when he was interested in fighting, he knew his business. He knew you, too…you politicians and nobles. Got his pay from doing the dirty work, just like me, so don’t be so surprised when we can guess what your little secrets are.”

“You don’t think he’s a French spy?” Filippo asked. He tied the bag shut, careful not to crumple or bend the papers inside as he tried to get the drawstring as tight as possible. It’d be carried back in a special compartment built into a saddle, and needed to not bulge or make a betraying rustle when hit.

“I think he’s just tired.” When Filippo looked up, Zlatan was staring at the far wall, his mouth quirked as if he had the ghost of some bitter memory in it. Then he ducked his head, absently pulling at a few strands of hair that had gotten trapped under his collar. “You don’t know horses…probably don’t know asses either, then. At least not four-legged—”

“I know about asses.” Filippo allowed himself to raise his eyebrows slightly at Zlatan’s surprised look. “However many legs they have.”

Sometimes Zlatan seemed to forget that Filippo wasn’t much better born than he was. Though he had commented acerbically enough on it whenever he thought Filippo was striving to be more than he was, and never mind his own position. He refrained from that hypocrisy this time, and instead merely picked up a quill. “Well, you know, sometimes they just won’t go. You could beat them to death and they won’t do it, for whatever reason is in their heads. It’s good enough for them, so they don’t care at all what you think of them, or of it.”

Then Zlatan fell silent. He gazed down at the table before him, his brows twitching together and then apart. His fingers slid along the shaft of the feather; one of his nails briefly ran across the blade to make a soft buzzing noise.

“Sometimes you just see enough, and what you got from soldiering doesn’t make up for it,” he added. He shrugged the shoulder nearest to Filippo, then plucked another sealed letter from the mess before him. Zlatan studied the seal, lightly running his thumb over it, before abruptly thrusting it at Filippo. He didn’t turn his head. “That’s for Sandro.”

Filippo took the letter. After a moment, he began to loosen the strings of the bag so he could add that to its contents.

“Escorting’s not the same, though, so maybe you’ll both enjoy it.” Then Zlatan lifted his head and smiled.

“I don’t enjoy work,” Filippo said, and left. He’d got what he’d intended to get, and so there was no further point in speaking to the man. Aside from the fact that Filippo also didn’t enjoy that duty.

It took till after the evening meal to track Vieri down to a…dice game, a huddle of men and the odd prostitute beside a tent. Somehow Filippo was more surprised than he logically should have been, given their introduction.

Vieri had the best-looking of the women draped over his shoulder, drawing her hands slowly through his tousled hair as he tossed down the dice. From the looks of the pile between his feet, he was still doing quite well, but from the look on his face, he wasn’t particularly entertained by the whole situation. He almost seemed relieved when somebody nudged his shoulder and pointed out Filippo.

“Did you tell them to look for me?” Filippo asked, once Vieri had brushed off the woman and collected his winnings.

“No. They just think if somebody’s in trouble, I can talk you out of it. That’s them, not me. I didn’t even say that we’ve met.” A broadsword of somewhat antiquated design was strapped to Vieri’s back, and when he shrugged its hilt caught the dying rays of the sun to nearly blind Filippo. He noticed and shifted till Filippo wasn’t squinting. “How was the horse?”

Filippo paused, then silently told himself he needed more sleep. Perhaps it was fortunate Zlatan had refused to let him go till the morning, pleading that otherwise too many people would be up to notice Filippo’s departure. “I never tried it. I don’t have time. I’m leaving at dawn tomorrow.”

“Without trying out the horse you’re trusting?” For the first time Vieri showed some actual reaction to Filippo, and not to something Filippo represented. He looked disbelieving.

“I’ll trust in it first, and reconcile myself to its faults later,” Filippo said.

Vieri snorted. “Those are a fool’s words.”

Filippo hadn’t entirely thought through his statement and had relied on habit to come up with a suitably inoffensive reply, but he thought he’d been punished rather harshly for that. And Vieri seemed to agree, almost wincing before he shook his head.

“If I can get into the saddle in the morning, then I can ride the animal,” Filippo eventually said. He looked at Vieri, at the stiff way the man was standing. “I hope you already have your mount sorted out. I can afford to wait on you even less.”

“Then I’ll be sure to hold your stirrup for you.” Something was in Vieri’s voice, possibly a trace of sarcasm. But he looked too serious for that, and when Filippo moved to go, he made a nod of his head that was too stiff to be mockery.

Tired, Filippo thought, and then pushed that out of his mind. He still had a few errands to run before he could indulge in another nap, and anyway, he would have the journey to consider Zlatan’s words and Vieri’s actions.

* * *

Vieri did show up on time, though still too late to hold Filippo’s stirrup. Arranging for another courier to reach Nesta, and then finishing his traveling preparations, took more time than he’d predicted. Nevertheless he should have had several hours’ sleep, but instead found himself lying wide awake on his bed, listening to some small animal, probably a rat, crawl about in the walls. He knew he needed the rest, but in the end got up and walked about the camp, catching snatches of conversation and observing the few others who were also moving about. That included a small crew working on the stables to mend some of the defects Filippo had noted but not mentioned to Zlatan, so presumably the faults had been a supply issue and not simply oversight.

“You have an escort?” Vieri said. He paused at the doorway to the stables, a handful of reins flopped over his shoulder to trail behind him.

Filippo glanced at the five men behind him. The dun shifted beneath him, throwing his balance so he had to abruptly seize his saddlehorn. He managed to limit his movement to that much, but he saw Vieri’s eyes flick to his hand. “Diplomatic missions require more than one man with a letter of introduction.”

For another moment Vieri eyed the men—picked as much for their discretion and limited expressiveness as for their travelling skills, so they attempted to ignore him. Though to a man, they clearly knew who he was.

“Could’ve fooled me, with what’s called themselves a diplomat to me before,” Vieri muttered. He swung the reins off his shoulder, adding a flick of the wrist to keep them straight, and then led out his horse. It wasn’t the one he’d won at gambling, but was instead a blue roan with a stocky, powerful build. The color would be showy on the plains, but after some thought, Filippo decided that in the mountains it’d be better camouflaged than his own horse. “Well, all right. I thought you said you cared about speed—”

“I do.” The horse moved again and Filippo willed his lips to remain slack over his gritted teeth as he gripped the saddlehorn. Once they were on the trail and the uneven motions were constant instead of unpredictably intermittent, he would adjust, but till then he was very aware of how glaring his deficiencies as a horseman were. “Escorts have never been a detriment to that before.”

Vieri looked at Filippo, then put his hands up on his saddle. He pulled himself onto his horse and flipped his reins to one side in the same smooth motion; his horse stamped in place and Vieri slightly rolled his knees forward. The beast stopped and Vieri raised his head in a continuation of his earlier slightly squinty, unapologetically dubious look.

His saddle had a bedroll strapped on behind him, and its bags looked full but not bursting. His clothes were essentially the same except for his new coat, which was still of leather but reached to the heels and most likely disguised a few weapons, since it alone couldn’t account for his increased bulk. But for all that, the overall impression was still that of clean efficiency: perhaps a little rustic, but a few minutes’ conversation was sufficient to reveal that that did not include peasant ignorance.

The other men seemed ready, so Filippo pulled his horse’s head around. Then he stopped and looked at Vieri, who had started and now was looking about, as if he…expected someone. “I made my farewell to the general earlier. We can leave when we’re ready, and if you don’t have any objections…”

“No.” With a shrug and apparently nothing else, not even a twitch of the fingers, Vieri turned his horse. He sent it past the others at a deceptively easy pace; in fact, Filippo only realized how fast the man was going when he slapped his reins against his mount’s flanks and made to catch up.

After the first few minutes, Filippo reined in and settled back in his saddle. Vieri was still several yards ahead, but the distance was constant now. The effort exerted in closing the rest of the way wouldn’t make up for what it would do to Filippo’s composure—or lower back, and that was already aching—and he also doubted that it would raise Vieri’s view of him. Which was of little value to Filippo anyway, as it didn’t advance Milan or Milanese goals in the slightest.

The others had caught up with Filippo easily enough. One or two looked towards Vieri’s back with tight-lipped blank faces, their prides clearly pricked, but Filippo shook his head at them. He noted which took a moment to bow their heads, but didn’t act on that now.

Vieri was looking over his shoulder. He was far enough away so that his expression was difficult to make out, but the rigid line of his body suggested that he disliked the situation. And then his horse swerved and he came back, cutting out Filippo from the men on his left before Filippo could even lift a hand.

“Just what pace were you looking to set?” Vieri asked. His breath was a little short, roughening his voice.

“I’m looking to find the French in a week. Eight days at the most.” Filippo kept his own voice low and emotionless. He wasn’t interested in antagonizing the man, or in tying himself up in some pointless battle of personalities, which he suspected Vieri thought was his intent. “However you think is best to accomplish that is how we’ll do it. You know the area.”

Nobody spoke, but the creakings and rustlings about them rose a little in volume. Then Vieri shrugged, reining in his horse. “You want me ahead or back here with you?”

“Which would work better?” Filippo replied.

Vieri looked carefully at him, half-turned on his horse with a casual grace that very few of those who called themselves horsemen actually possessed. Around them the other men formed a curious circle, their stares carrying such weight that Filippo began to regret not dealing with this in a private conversation. But then, he’d thought Vieri understood how such affairs were handled; the man should’ve had the experience to know.

“Fine,” Vieri finally said. His expression didn’t change. He slowed his horse a little more, till it was just abreast of Filippo, and then seemed to settle to the pace.

A low breath, almost a whistle, came from behind Filippo. He glanced over his shoulder, but neither of the two men riding behind him were looking anywhere near him. A little too studied, he thought, but he let it go. He looked down at his horse, gauging the quality of the ache in his legs and back: it’d spread but had dulled in the spreading, so that in a quarter-hour he likely wouldn’t be feeling it anymore. When he unlocked his knees from their stiff press against the saddle-flaps, he found his balance secure enough so that he didn’t have to grab the saddlehorn.

So Filippo clucked his horse a little faster. Beside him Vieri turned, but the dun’s shifting of speed wasn’t quite as easy on Filippo’s hips as its pace was and Filippo was too distracted to note the other man’s reaction. When he did look, the other man was gazing at the horizon. He wasn’t even holding his reins, but instead had looped them up around the pommel of his saddle.

Filippo wasn’t nearly so confident in his horse, but he’d trained himself to deal with certain problems well enough to have faith in that. He looked about the other men, and when he saw that their shoulders and arms were all fairly relaxed, he carefully scooted himself back on the saddle till he could lean on the horse’s neck. The dun’s step faltered, then picked smoothly up, and when Filippo reached down to hook one hand through a strap, the animal didn’t flinch at all.

The next few miles would be the safest land through which they’d travel, and were the least likely to tell himself anything useful about Vieri. Or anyone else, since they’d all be still nervous with anticipation of what was to come. Later, when the rhythm of the journey had lulled them into carelessness, he’d pay attention. For now, he laid his head against the horse’s mane and closed his eyes. Once he’d fallen asleep, his legs would slacken to hang like weights and keep him better balanced than if he was awake, and his hand wouldn’t let go of that strap unless his instincts allowed it. And by that point they’d have woken him so he could judge the situation for himself.

* * *

The first two nights they slept in proper inns, since they were on a well-traveled trading route. At each place Filippo paid for the separate room, but when he did feel tired enough to sleep a little, he gathered his belongings and slipped out to the stables. The clean grassy smell of the hay in the loft there reminded him of his parents’ home, so he spread out a blanket and bedded down on that.

Since he’d left his parents’ village, he’d never been able to sleep for more than a few hours except for his room in the ducal palace in Milan, or the spare room his brother always kept open for Filippo in his house. And even in those places he rarely slept deeply, but the life of the diplomat was the life of the road, and so Filippo had grown used to starting awake at nothing and then slowly convincing himself back to sleep.

There was one moment, however, when he woke with his fingers pressing over the dagger he kept in his boot, and his legs coiling beneath himself. He listened very closely for several minutes, but only heard the normal sounds of creaking wood, animal grunts and rustling branches. Even so, he kept his hand over his dagger as he lifted his head—he saw nothing. Except perhaps the ladder that he’d used to get into the loft—and then pulled up after him—had shifted slightly. But it was lying on the hay, which would shift under nothing more than a light breeze, and anyway, Filippo saw no new imprints in the straw itself. So he did put his head back down, though he didn’t find slumber again that night.

* * *

“It’s faster, and we’re a small enough party so that the trail should be manageable.” Vieri leaned over the side of his horse, his shoulders pulling back, and then hawked at the ground. Just beyond the left forefoot of his horse, a small flower suddenly vanished.

Massimo gazed at a point just above Vieri’s left shoulder. His fingers absently but incessantly rubbed over his belt when they weren’t brushing one recalcitrant blond strand from his eyes. “It’s barely spring.”

“Snow should be melted enough,” Vieri said, shrugging. He abruptly put his foot back and Filippo raised his chin, but the other man merely leaned his weight on it as he stretched his back and arms. Then he rolled his shoulders. “It’s the way I’d go. You get about half a day, a day on the…”

“Safer route?” Massimo suggested.

Vieri glanced at him on the way to looking at the sky, as if Massimo were merely of passing interest. He didn’t look at Filippo at all, though Massimo frequently did. “It’s the better way. It’s what I think. You can think whatever you like.”

“We’ll go that way,” Filippo finally said. He also signaled to Massimo, and his timing was proven correct when Vieri pivoted on his heel to stare down at Filippo a bare second after Filippo had stilled his hands.

After a moment, Vieri lifted and dropped his shoulder, and then his chin. He turned and walked away, apparently to get his share of the midday meal. Massimo waited an extra few seconds before he turned to Filippo.

“Is it that much worse?” Filippo had already gotten his food and had eaten about as much of it as he felt his stomach would stand for, given the roughness of the trail. But he still had left too much to throw away—at least in front of the others, whom he wanted to be thrifty and careful—so he made himself pick at the bread.

Vieri was still angled so that he could watch them. He didn’t seem to be, and in fact had his back to them, but Massimo still glanced towards him. “It’s…high,” he finally said. “He’s been that way and I haven’t, but it seems…the snow shouldn’t have had time to melt. It hasn’t been that warm.”

They were packed for it, and if they could gain a day in the mountains, that would be precious leeway for what was likely to be the most difficult part: finding the French king. Louis had brought his army with him, so he wasn’t going to be interested in anything Filippo could say. Unless it was unconditional surrender, but that would never fall from Filippo’s lips. His advisors and nobles, however, might not be so enthralled with his obsession with Milan and so Filippo might be able to sway them into pressuring Louis. Which the man well knew, and hence why he wouldn’t want to see Filippo. “Would it be faster?” Filippo asked.

Massimo shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Fair enough.” Filippo noticed but refrained from commenting on Massimo’s half-suppressed grimace as he turned.

Vieri did look up when Filippo came back to the group. “Done consulting?”

“We’ll go your way,” Filippo said. He picked a few more bits bread into his mouth as he assessed the others’ reactions.

Something struck Filippo’s boot. It was little more than a tap, but the sharp noise that accompanied the blow startled him; he looked down at the still-rolling pebble, then up. And then he looked to the side, at Vieri’s rapidly retreating back. The man’s shoulders were pulled forward again, as if the load on them had abruptly doubled.

“I thought he’d be happy,” Massimo said, blinking.

“Are you done?” Filippo spoke before any of the others could interrupt, and even went through the trouble of looking each of them in the eye. “All right, then let’s go.”

After he’d mounted, he stuffed the remainder of his meal into his saddlebag. His fingers happened to sink into another cloth-wrapped bundle, and then Filippo permitted himself a little sigh as he remembered about yesterday’s lunch. He couldn’t throw away the food even if he could convince himself to waste it like that, since it’d leave too clear of a sign to anyone who might be following them, but his saddlebag was getting full. And tonight would be the last inn, so he’d have to remember to take care of the matter then.

* * *

The candle by Filippo’s elbow rattled in its holder, its flame blowing nearly horizontal in the sudden draft. Then Vieri closed the door and the flame steadied again. Filippo murmured some word of welcome, then cleared his throat and asked Vieri to wait a moment while he finished the letter before him. When he didn’t hear an objection, he put the tip of his quill back to the paper.

The innkeeper had mentioned that a French-speaking group had apparently been in the area a few weeks before. He’d only heard it from a huntsman from some mountain village, who’d only mentioned it in passing, but Filippo had decided to send word back to Zlatan anyway. The supposed Frenchmen were already gone, and Zlatan could afford to send out someone to talk to the villagers, whereas Filippo couldn’t afford the delay.

“All right,” Filippo said, lifting his quill. He wiped the tip on the back of his hand before setting it in its holder, and then turned as he tilted the letter towards the candle to help the ink dry. “Is something the matter?”

“If you don’t want to listen to me, then why am I here?” Vieri rocked forward as if he meant to slap the table in emphasis, but at the last moment merely hooked his thumb through his belt. He glowered at Filippo, his brows pulled down and his lips a little back so a pale hint of his teeth was visible behind them. “All of them, they don’t know the area at all. Clearly you meant to just trust in my judgment, so why question it?”

Long years of effort had given Filippo the ability to still his expression without making his face rigid or tense. He was glad for that now, as he suspected any hint of nerves would’ve only fueled Vieri’s odd burst of temper. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand…”

“Back there. You let him argue with me, and then you asked him what he thought when I walked off. Ambrosini’s from the other side of Italy, from Pesaro. You know, I don’t understand why he’s here at all. He comes from Sforza lands, his Duke used to be married to the Pope’s daughter…” There was more, but Vieri jerked his head around at the mention of the Pope so Filippo couldn’t hear it. He stood that way for a moment, presenting the side of his grimace, and then turned to present the whole of it to Filippo. “Well?”

“Massimo’s not been to Pesaro for a long time. His loyalty’s been tested, and it lies with the Duke of Milan,” Filippo said slowly. He glanced over to make sure he hadn’t let the letter wander too close to the flame, then met Vieri’s gaze again. “I don’t think he meant to offend you. He holds you in high regard. And I’m sorry if I offended you, but I needed to know if they would go on that trail or if I’d have to leave them behind.”

Vieri blinked, his brows rising in surprise. His lower lip slowly folded under, then pulled out again, the red marks from his teeth visible on it. “You weren’t wavering on whether to use it?”

“I don’t really care where I go. I don’t know where I’m going.” The letter’s writing was dry when Filippo gingerly touched his thumb to a relatively unimportant word. He gave the sheet a quick flap just to be sure, then put it down on the table so he could fold it. “I know I will be arriving wherever the French king happens to be sometime next week. The rest doesn’t concern me—that is why you’re here, so you can take care of that. But I’ve traveled a good deal and I don’t have very good experiences with reluctant escorts. If they aren’t so willing, I’d rather just leave them and lead an extra horse.”

After he’d folded the letter, Filippo reached for the sealing wax, but his fingers touched bare wood. He paused, frowning at his fingertips, and then looked up.

The little red stick was in Vieri’s hand, held just a little too far for Filippo to comfortably reach. Vieri was looking at it, rubbing a thumb along its side, and didn’t look up when Filippo instead picked up the sealing ring. “You’re serious.”

“I need that,” Filippo said. He lifted his hand, still looking at Vieri’s bent head, and then stretched to pick the wax stick from the other man’s hands. It came easily enough, so Filippo didn’t hesitate in turning to light the wick, and then to drop the clump of wax onto the letter and stamp it. If he wanted Massimo to make any headway tonight, he needed to get the letter downstairs to the man within the next quarter-hour.

“Is this what you do all the time? Ride around wherever Paolo tells you to go?” Vieri pressed his thumb and forefinger together to squeeze out a little speck of wax that had crumbled off the stick, then flicked it so it went through the candle-flame. Then he stepped forward and pressed his thumb into the softened dot of red.

Filippo studied the seal, and when he decided the imprint was clear enough, held the letter away from the flame so the wax would finish hardening. He counted to thirty before reaching for the leather envelope and inserting the letter into it. “I’m a diplomat. I go wherever Milan’s affairs reach.”

“I’ll get you to the French king,” Vieri muttered. He glanced at Filippo, then gave his forefinger a little more attention than it really warranted as its nail scraped his waxy thumbprint off the table. “But getting that probably won’t be that comfortable.”

“I don’t really notice,” Filippo said, knotting off the envelope’s bindings. He put it aside, then began to pack up his writing set. Then he thought the better of it—he had nothing left to write, but if he stopped Vieri might wonder what else he did at night—and instead started to resharpen his quill pen.

“I don’t think you do.” Vieri stood there a little longer, lips parted as if he meant to say more. But then he shook his head and half-turned. “That’s it.”

He’d only gone a pace when Filippo started to speak, but the man twisted about as if Filippo had let him go to the door before calling him back. So Filippo dropped his head to watch the brownish curl peel from the quill’s shaft, and then fall to the table when he gave his penknife a slight twist. “I asked them after dinner, and they are all going except for Massimo.”

“Dislikes mountains that much?” Vieri asked. His normal tone seemed to carry a hint of sarcasm, but his question had a genuine edge to it.

“He’s volunteered to take some messages back to the general,” Filippo neutrally replied.

A few minutes later, the door settled softly into its frame, with only a few scrapes to alert Filippo to that. He looked at its planks as Vieri’s heavy tread faded down the hall, then reached for the leather envelope he’d prepared before Vieri, and then for another one he’d done earlier and then wedged beneath the table. Filippo critically examined the two, and when he was certain that they weren’t distinguishable, he stuck both beneath his arm and went out to go find Massimo.

* * *

After that they were high in the mountains and well off the beaten trail, so they made do with sleeping on the ground, against rockfaces that provided some shelter from the wind and with one man always awake to tend the fire and watch for the wolves. The snow hadn’t entirely melted yet, which led to the first disillusioned looks towards Vieri. But it wasn’t deep enough to make the going very difficult, or to obscure the fact that they were actually following some sort of track and not merely a fancy of Vieri’s, so Filippo didn’t believe it was much to worry about. Not yet.

He did worry about his ink, which had frozen solid so its glass bottle had broken and forced him to dump out the entire contents of that one bag in order to get rid of all the shards. With those he’d lost a good bit of the ink, and even though he had managed to collect the remainder in another bottle, it wasn’t much. It wasn’t a problem now, when likely the only one who’d be interested in his experiences would be his mother, worrying about his toes and fingers, but when they reached France…Filippo grimaced and idly poked at a nearby drift, wondering if he could find somebody to buy ink for him who wouldn’t report back to Louis about how unprofessional he was.

“Almost crested. It’s downhill after tomorrow,” Vieri said above Filippo’s head. The other man stamped his feet, and also shook off his clothes, judging from the rustling and the sudden patter on Filippo’s back. Then something brushed Filippo’s shoulder.

He started about, thrusting his hand into the snow to keep his balance, and then stared up at Vieri. The light up here was very white and clear, painful to the eyes, and at first what Filippo saw was little more than a dazzling halo. Then he narrowed his eyes and put up his hand over them, and Vieri’s crooked mouth emerged from the whiteness.

Vieri didn’t apologize for dusting off Filippo, though he did pull back his hand to finish sweeping the rest of the snow from his hair and shoulders. “What are you doing over here?”

“Laying out my bedroll.” Filippo lifted his hand from the snowbank and shook it clean, then pressed the reddened, chilly fingers to the side of his jaw. When they had warmed, he took the precaution of wrapping them in part of his scarf before he resumed what he’d been doing prior to being distracted by his own thoughts: mounding up the snow along the side of his bedroll into a low wall.

Tonight they’d managed to find an overhang that would fit both men and horses, but the rock wall ran nearly straight and only offered protection from one direction. The other three sides were enclosed by thick hedges of firs that ranged from knee to neck-height, but that did little to keep out the bone-biting wind. The snow in this patch, however, was quite plentiful, and of the heavy, clumping kind.

“Dogs do that,” Vieri observed. He looked at Filippo, then rolled one shoulder. “I did that in Spain.”

Filippo didn’t reply, though he did glance up at the mention of Spain. He only saw Vieri’s back, but the lines of it were thrown into high relief because the other man was hunching in on himself again, doing something at about the level of his breast. He had some sort of scar arcing over the lower left of his back, and then another irregularity high on his left ribs that was more of an unevenness in the bones—maybe a rib that’d been broken and then imperfectly mended.

Vieri looked over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed against a little more than the wind, and then walked off. He passed under a branch loaded with snow and his tread stirred that enough to send a cascade down the back of his head, but he didn’t seem to notice it. He didn’t brush it off, even when he’d seated himself before the fire to take his turn at heating up their food.

The sky was still light, but the far horizon was turning purple so night would arrive within the hour. So Filippo curled down with his back to the mound of snow, tucked up his blanket around himself, and dozed while he could.

* * *

Usually Vieri at least pretended to be asleep when it wasn’t his turn on watch, but that night he stayed up for an extra shift so he was glowering over the red embers of the fire when Filippo lifted his head. For a moment Filippo was still, but then he gave himself a shake—a little snow had fallen on him, and quickly found its way between the seams of his clothing to melt—and turned to pull up his bedroll. The other man clearly had seen him wake, so he saw no point in dissembling.

It had been cold to begin with, but the air had chilled precipitously as night had fallen, so the snow beneath Filippo’s clothes began to freeze almost as soon as it’d melted. He pulled at his collar, trying to shake out the stuff, but soon realized that that wouldn’t do it. So he gave into the inevitable and took his blankets with him to the fire, where he could dry out.

“You should be able to smell the horses, at least. Or was it the hay that did it for you?” Vieri abruptly asked. He had one knee pulled up to his chest and the other stretched out before him, pinning down something beneath its heel.

Part of a bridle. And in the man’s hands were a slender awl, looking like a twig between the large blunt fingers, and a very fine leather thong. As Filippo settled himself a few feet away, Vieri resumed his mending.

“Neither.” Filippo would’ve preferred to leave it at that, but Vieri looked up again, and for once that face was livened with a little curiosity. “I don’t sleep well in strange beds,” he finally added.

“Isn’t that a little of a disadvantage, with your line of work?” Vieri said. His tone was odd, light and almost playful. He looked down at something his hands weren’t doing correctly, then lifted his head again to produce an actual smile. “You were a farmer, weren’t you?”

A bit of rock went skittering from Filippo’s hand into the flames, where it briefly sizzled before falling silently to disappear into the ashes. It’d been wet from the water now dripping from Filippo’s hair, presumably. “My family is. I entered the civil service very young.”

“Pigs or grapes?” Then Vieri raised an eyebrow. He flicked something off his fingers, then tossed aside the bridle as he pulled himself up to squat. The awl went into one of many little pockets cut into a long strip of leather, which held many other instruments—some that Filippo was mildly surprised to realize he didn’t recognize. “You’re from Piacenza. Civil service or not, you can still hear it when you’re startled. As startled as you get, at least.”

Filippo almost grimaced. He’d worked very hard to eliminate his accent, and also to avoid ever being startled.

“There’s nothing wrong with farming,” Vieri added. He rolled up his instrument kit, then tucked that away behind himself. Then he put both palms flat on the ground and pushed down on them, stretching out his shoulders. “My father did a bit of that.”

“Pigs or grapes?” Filippo asked after a moment. He looked at the fire.

The side of his face nearest to Vieri itched for a moment. Then the other man moved, stirring his blankets and filling the startling quiet of the night with the slippery rustle of his coat. “Neither.” When Filippo looked over, Vieri was smiling again. A little like Zlatan, Filippo thought: all white teeth, so blinding that one almost missed the dark opaque eyes. “Wheat. In France.”

The obvious tactic would be to pounce on ‘France’ and quiz the man. Instead Filippo shrugged and put out one hand towards the fire so his sleeve would dry out. “Pigs. We brought them out of the woods in the autumn, to the butchers.”

“I thought you said you were a civil servant,” Vieri said. His teeth were showing in his voice now as well.

“I am. But before that,” Filippo replied. He twisted his fingers about and felt at his sleeve, then pulled the cloth over his hand to stretch it and expose more to the fire’s heat. “I tracked pigs through the woods.”

He was expecting the other man to sink back into one of those silent spells, but Vieri laughed. Clear and ringing, so Filippo jumped and then nearly put his hand in the fire as he steadied himself. Some of the other men moved restlessly in their blankets; Vieri’s eyes went to one and he shut his mouth, the planes of his face suddenly smooth and cold as the icicles that hung from the tips of every branch around them.

No one actually woke, as far as Filippo could tell. That wasn’t terribly surprising, since they had been pushing hard over rough terrain, and anyway, most soldiers had an instinct for selecting what alarmed them. Anything else they ignored, keeping their world to an eminently manageable, blissfully ignorant size.

“You’re not embarrassed.” Vieri shifted his position again, putting down one knee against the ground. He fussed with his blankets before startling Filippo with an abrupt upward glance.

“It’s how I grew up,” Filippo said. He shrugged at the change in the other man’s expression. “I’ll tell someone if asked, but I don’t really see the significance in it. It’s not that important to what I do.”

A piece of wood popped in the fire, loudly enough for at least one of the others to jerk away and mumble out a question. Filippo waved his hand, which seemed to be enough for the man, since he grunted and laid back down. Someone else told him to stop making so much noise, then kicked out at the rockface as he turned over. Throughout the whole proceedings, Vieri hadn’t moved. He’d been staring at Filippo at the beginning of it and at the end, his stare was exactly the same.

“You don’t think how you grow up is important to the work you do?” Vieri finally asked, once everyone else had settled. His face had lost its humor and with that, its mobility. With the way the firelight tinted his skin, he looked like a bronze statue that had been streaked by age and an inclement climate. But then he snorted, wrinkles suddenly appearing at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth, and he simply looked like a tired man. “Then you didn’t like farming.”

“It’s not really important what I like.” Then Filippo began to turn, but he stopped when a pebble skated over the back of his hand. After a moment, he looked up.

“Do you?” Vieri asked. He was fingering another rock, and as Filippo watched, expertly flicked it into the fire so a teetering piece of wood abruptly crashed down into the center of the embers. “I’m curious about unimportant things. People don’t worry so much about them, so they don’t mind when you look more closely.”

Filippo only hesitated because he needed to draw a breath to speak. “No, I didn’t like the work. I respect my family’s tradition, and believe it should be carried on, but it didn’t suit me.”

“All right.” Some animal cry rose into the air and Vieri looked towards it, his hand dropping back to his side. Then he pulled it onto his thigh, and then began to rub at his knee, occasionally grimacing as if the joint was sore. “Why didn’t you just say that when I asked?”

“I think you think it’s important,” Filippo replied. His clothes were more or less dry now, so he edged back from the fire; his face was beginning to feel roasted.

Vieri looked at him, then put down one knee and pulled up the other to rub at that in the same way. “And it’s not, because it’s got nothing to do with your work or my work.” He smiled again. It had a little humor to it, but of the sort that matched the chill in the air. “You know, I liked farming. We did olives for a while, too…it’s hard work, but regular. You don’t have to think about it so much. You can have too much of thinking, just like anything else.”

“Then don’t think about what I like.” That animal, whatever it was, cried out again and Filippo couldn’t help looking that way.

Someone behind Filippo snorted, then shook off his blanket and grumbled his way away. He scooted up beside Filippo to warm his hands and look about, then went back to his bedroll. When Filippo turned, he found the man uncovering a crossbow.

“Because you’re unimportant?” Vieri’s voice was very loud, and came with a warm breath that Filippo felt dancing over his half-numbed ear. The other man tapped Filippo’s shoulder before Filippo had even finished starting, then moved on to pull the cover back on the crossbow. “Just get another stick of wood on the fire,” Vieri told the startled man. “They’re only scouting. If they smell the smoke, that’ll do enough to keep them back.”

The man looked towards Filippo before he obeyed, but Vieri didn’t seem to pay attention. And then he settled back in his spot, pulling his blankets as if to prepare to sleep—it was long past the end of his shift—so perhaps he hadn’t taken offense and wouldn’t be simmering on it so he could present Filippo with another confrontation in the morning.

“No,” Filippo muttered under the breath, when he could see that the fresh cord of wood was about to sputter in the fire’s heat.

He thought the noise drowned out his voice, but then he heard something and looked towards Vieri, only to find that the other man had drawn his blankets over his head. Filippo rubbed at his mouth, then at his eyes, and then he moved out of the way of the new watchman. He went on back to his own sleeping spot, though of course he wasn’t going to sleep.

* * *

The greatest danger wasn’t the wolves, or the threat of war crystallized in the clear pale sky, or even the sense of impotence that gnawed at Filippo’s nerves every moment he was away from any voice that might tell him something, any sight that he could read for more than: _Snow in the evening, and cold._ It was the patches of ice, sometimes in plain sight but difficult to spot unless the sunlight glanced them off at the correct angle, but more often hidden under snow, so one never knew about them till the horse’s weight suddenly, unexpectedly shifted.

“Broken,” Vieri said. As he got back to his feet, he absently stroked the flanks of the downed horse.

The animal’s teeth clacked as it threw its head back and forth, its lips wrenched back to show the black undersides. It lashed out with its three good feet, then slammed its neck against the ground hard enough for the carrying-through of the motion to lift its hindquarters off the snow. Then it made an attempt to get onto its feet so two men had to toss their bodies over it. The one nearest its head patted and stroked its muzzle in an attempt to calm it.

Vieri’s brows had risen as the horse had entered its fit, but he remained standing away. “It knows what’s coming.”

The man on the beast’s hindquarters, its rider, nearly shot Vieri an anguished look before his chin pulled it down and away; they all still paid deference to Vieri, or at least to Vieri’s reputation. Filippo pressed his lips tightly together, then rubbed them as he spoke. “Isn’t it a he?”

That earned him a sharp glance from Vieri, and a few half-stifled exclamations from the others. “Not when you’re about to kill it,” Vieri told him. The other man stepped back to his horse, where he pulled a crossbow from among the bundles strapped to the saddle. After loading it, he offered it to the horse’s rider, who recoiled—after a moment, Vieri shrugged and went around to kneel by the horse’s head. “Stretch it.”

Neither the rider nor the man holding down the horse’s neck made an objection. The man on the neck pressed his fingers flat on the neck, leaving clear an area about as long as a forearm between his hands. The horse panicked again, its eyes rolling wildly till they finally were focused on the man behind it—and Vieri shot a bolt into its eye before it could blink.

If one was watching the crossbow. Filippo paid more attention to Vieri’s shoulders, to the way they surged up to strain the seams of the man’s coat, then just as suddenly subsided. Vieri hadn’t seemed to take any particular precautions in bracing himself—and crossbows delivered a tremendous kick, as Filippo knew from experience—but he’d hardly moved. And the lack of movement said more about his effort than years of traveling did for others.

Through the eye didn’t leave much blood, save for the slow, constant trickle that pooled out from beneath the horse’s head. Three of the other men, which included the beast’s former rider, avoided looking at it as they fell to stripping the body of its tack and goods. The fourth grimaced at it, and Vieri looked at it thoughtfully, rewinding his scarf around his neck.

“Leave it,” Filippo said. He held out his hands for the extra set of bags his horse would have to carry, then slung them over his shoulder. The weight staggered him for a moment and he had to take a step back, but then he adjusted.

Something moved to his right, but when he looked over, Vieri’s hand was tugging at his scarf again. He stepped in, bent over to undo the girth-buckle, and then pulled the saddle off the corpse and hefted it onto his shoulder. Then he turned to look at Filippo. “You don’t want to at least drag it out of the road?”

“We should be too far by the time we stop for the night to worry about the wolves…” Filippo waited for Vieri to nod in agreement, then turned to began strapping the saddlebags to his horse. “And we’re close enough. I don’t want to sneak into the French camp.”

Vieri grunted. When Filippo had finished with his bags, the other man had already mounted his horse. The saddle was strapped to his back: it was a plain, heavy type, and already seemed to be interfering with the movement of his arms, though of course he didn’t need those to ride his horse. He batted at a hanging strap as he used knees alone to turn the beast back onto the trail, and then walked his horse up till he was back at the front of the group.

He looked a bit like a turtle that way, Filippo thought, and then chastised himself for the irrelevance as he started forward as well. Then he was too distracted for such musing, since his horse’s stride had changed under the extra weight and all of a sudden Filippo was reminded that he was very much not a horseman.

“What’s the speed for, then?” While Filippo had been attempting to adjust to his horse, Vieri had dropped back alongside him. The other man slipped a little further back, then surged forward as their horses went over a half-buried log and Filippo’s mount had to slow so he didn’t fall off. The side of Vieri’s mouth twitched as he watched.

“The speed is because I don’t want the French king to know I’m coming to see him till it’s too late for him to move,” Filippo muttered. He willed himself to ignore the horse entirely, to ignore the rapidly-deepening soreness in his lower back and thighs. If he could stop thinking about how the animal’s pace had changed, then he wouldn’t resist it so much. His horse could get on with its business, and he could get on with his own. “I’m an accredited ambassador, not a spy. And I’m not about to give him a reason to call me one. As soon as we’re in the lowlands again, I’m sending a man ahead to ask Louis for an audience.”

While Filippo talked, a buckle repeatedly hit Vieri in the elbow, but he waited till Filippo was finished to reach around and tuck it out of the way. “You want me to go? I’m the one who knows French.”

“You want to?” Filippo asked, blinking.

Vieri jerked up his chin and looked at Filippo, then twisted about to gaze ahead of them. “No, to the right of the tree,” he said to the man currently leading. He rose slightly in his stirrups and didn’t settle again till he saw that they were going the way he wanted. Then he arched his shoulders and swung his bent arms back, as if trying to bump his elbows across the saddle. “Why are you asking me? You’re going to decide whether I do or not.”

“I wasn’t sure if you were volunteering.” He’d forgotten about the horse, Filippo absently thought. Then he winced, as just then his hips had moved one way when the saddle was twisting another, thus guaranteeing a new bruise on his inner thigh. “You’re the only one who’s familiar with French territory. You leaving would make it difficult for the rest of us, but on the other hand, you’d get the message to Louis faster.”

Oddly enough, Vieri looked as if he’d suffered something similar, although as far as Filippo could tell, his body was easily swaying along with his horse’s movements. The man grimaced and raked his fingers back through his hair, dislodging the band of cloth he had looped over his head. He irritably yanked that back into place. “Look, what am I supposed to be? Your advisor or your guide?”

Filippo busied his hands with pointlessly rearranging the way his reins fell over the dun’s neck as he rapidly reviewed the past few minutes. Then he frowned and stared back at Vieri. “You’re supposed to get me out of these mountains and to the king of France.”

“Then why do you keep telling me what you think? And letting me tell you what I think?” Vieri demanded. His whole body hitched up at the last word, hard enough to send his horse skittering sideways and force him to use the reins to yank it back in line.

The others were pretending very hard not to listen, Filippo noted. He suppressed both a sigh and the urge to press his hand to the side of his head. “I’m trying to let you do your job, so I can do mine. So I…at least I mean to tell you what I need done, and then I want to hear how you’re going to do it. I think you’re thinking too much about this. You’re no diplomat.”

That last comment slipped out before Filippo could help himself, though he did manage to prevent a grimace at the mistake. He slipped his hand down to the pommel and gripped that tight as he watched for Vieri’s reaction.

At first Vieri’s face tightened, the skin drawing smooth over its planes so no emotion was visible except for in his eyes, and those were dark with no depth, like the flat look of an executioner. His fingers absently twisted up the reins around them, tugging till the flesh beneath the leather was turning white.

Then he looked down at his hands. His mouth quirked, and he abruptly slumped back in the saddle as he freed his fingers with a flick. “You’re shit at riding horses.”

“I know,” Filippo said after a moment. When Vieri looked up at him, he shrugged.

“You’re not supposed to take that that calmly. It’s an insult.” Vieri rubbed at his fingers, which were still ringed with white but were slowly going to a deep angry red. He might’ve bruised himself. “I meant it to be an insult.”

Nevertheless Filippo released his hold on the saddle and gingerly reseated himself. Then he winced as his buttocks and thighs suffered a thumping anyway, but he didn’t bother looking for Vieri’s reaction. The man was puzzled, not frustrated. “I know. But it’s true, too.”

“It’s also true that I’m not a diplomat. Never wanted to be one,” Vieri said. He rolled the shoulder farther from Filippo, dropping his chin. Then he ran his hand over his head, pulling the scarf down so a good handful of hair promptly flew into his eyes. “I can draw a map. For whoever you want to send. Whenever you tell me where the king is.”

“I’ll know that when we get into the hills.” Then, of course, thoughts of who Filippo would have to contact and how—taking care not to reveal their identities to anyone else—came to mind. They preoccupied him for several minutes, till a twig snapped loudly nearby and he started, jerking up his head.

All he saw was Vieri, staring curiously at him. And then the red inside of Vieri’s mouth, as the man opened it wide in one of those carelessly brash laughs. It was only the one soaring whoop, like a lone crane caught migrating late, but it was sufficient to fill the thin, empty mountain air.

“You.” Vieri paused. His mouth had already lost the contours of that laugh, and grown tense and tight again. “You’re not a man. Not at all.”

He didn’t say it with that hard, challenging tone, or with that little lift of the brows. But Filippo still flinched as if that had been the insult. Then he frowned at himself as Vieri rode ahead, telling the men to go some other way.

* * *

The lengthening of the days allowed Filippo to honestly say that they had left the mountains before night had fallen, but it was only just. They found their way through the foothills under moonlight, and by the time they arrived at the town to which Filippo had told Vieri to take them, even the horses were beginning to doze off mid-stride. When they finally reached the right inn, somebody was tired enough to mutter a comment that nearly impugned the marital state of Filippo’s mother when she’d been carrying him.

Filippo had never met the innkeeper, but he was reluctantly impressed with the detail of the reports he’d received when he saw how well they matched the man stepping out into the courtyard. He started to reach up, paused as his horse shuffled in place, and when it settled, pulled a drawstring off his neck, and the ring that was on the thong out of his shirt. Then he unknotted the string and slipped the ring off that onto his finger.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” the man started in French. His eyes flicked off to the side as Filippo casually fiddled with his reins, turning his hand into the lantern-light. They paused on the ring, then went back to Filippo’s face. “I hope you’ve done with looking for a place to weather the night, for you can’t find a better one than my inn.”

“We are,” Filippo said, and then nodded to Vieri. He gazed about the rest of the town—little more than a village, but then, trading season hadn’t begun in earnest yet—as the other man haggled prices and settled their arrangements.

It looked more or less like the villages on the other side of the mountains, though here and there an architectural detail differed. Aside from the inn, none of the windows that Filippo could see were lit, so presumably they’d come in unremarked. Though as he watched, a light suddenly appeared in an upstairs window two houses down.

So he was glad when Vieri finally grunted that things were done. A boy came out and showed them the way to the stables; Filippo allowed the others to go ahead of him and then ungracefully but quickly dismounted just after they’d rounded the corner. Then he led his horse after them, and turned it over to the boy’s care.

“Thought you didn’t care that you’re terrible on a horse,” Vieri said. He’d kept the extra saddle with him, and now was holding it against one hip as he gazed at Filippo.

The loft here looked nice, still quite full of hay despite the fact that winter was barely over with, but it was out of the question now, Filippo reluctantly realized. Then he caught himself staring too long at that, and looked instead at the innkeeper walking towards them. “No, but other people seem to care about things like that.”

Vieri made a low, amused noise in his throat. When Filippo looked again at him, the other man had turned to brace one foot against the wall and was trying to knock mud off the heel of his boot. So Filippo let him be, and instead went to greet the innkeeper.

“Ludovic—Ludo,” the man said, bestowing an extravagant smile upon Filippo. He shook Filippo’s hand again, and then held onto it as he began to lead Filippo back towards the main building. His eyebrow twitched when Filippo carefully pulled his fingers free, but he merely beamed all the more brightly. And switched to Italian, his voice dropping to a whisper. “It’s a pleasure to actually meet you.”

“Louis?” Filippo held his hand where Giuly could see it, then twisted the ring off his finger and put that safely away. He memorized the way Giuly slightly flattened his lips upon seeing that, and also how the man’s eyes never changed.

Giuly flapped his apron, then brushed at it. Little specks of white—flour, Filippo supposed—briefly sparkled in the air. “Briançon. About two days’ easy riding.”

So one, maybe less than one, Filippo noted. “I need a map to the place. I’ll be sending a messenger to announce my arrival and beg for an audience.”

“The big blond one?” Giuly asked.

Excellent service for years now, and the man had already been tested several times by deliberately feeding him false information. He’d never leaked it, or raised questions when he’d received contradicting information later on. “No. The one with the scar on his cheek. The other one is Christian Vieri, the _condottiere_. He’s here on other business,” Filippo said. He slightly stressed the last two words, and when Giuly looked at him, nodded. “Dinner?”

Giuly didn’t break stride or tone of voice as he went back to French. “There’s a bit of a nice roast left, and rabbit stew. Some buns, but they’re just about a day old…”

Now that Filippo was down on the ground, the muscles in his back and legs were twisting up tighter and tighter with every step he took. He finally had to put a hand behind himself and dig its heel in beside his spine to make it the rest of the way to the door. “I’ll take the bread.”

* * *

The bed was surprisingly soft, but unfortunately that only allowed Filippo’s aching muscles to stiffen even more. He had known he wouldn’t sleep, but he thought he could have at least let his body recover before he had to deal with Louis—Filippo flopped onto his side again, then pressed his hand over his face as he sighed. Then he decided it was a lost cause and gingerly rolled off the bed onto his feet.

His hands instinctively went to his back, and then he worked them up and down the insides and backs of his thighs as he walked crab-legged over to the single chair in the room. He had some notion of using it to brace himself as he did some stretches, but then he heard a clicking near the door. Filippo didn’t stop moving, but he listened very carefully as he stepped soundlessly out of his boots and then walked those over to the window with his hands. Then he moved them to one hand and thumped them a little harder to mimic the way somebody sat down. With his other hand, he silently opened the window.

Outside was quite cold, but thankfully, there was no wind to give him away, and the hinges on the shutters were well-oiled; Giuly kept a very neat, if modest place. There was also a broad sill on the exterior of the house, and when Filippo pushed down on it, he felt no give. So he quickly got up onto the sill. Then he retrieved and put on his boots while using one hand to shift the chair about so its legs scraped the floor. By then the lock on the door had clicked a second time, and much more loudly so Filippo hurried his movements. He lifted himself up onto the roof and had just enough time to shut the shutters before he heard the door opening.

After making sure that he had a firm footing on the wooden tiles, Filippo unstrapped the daggers from the insides of his boots. He gently set one against the edge of the roof, but kept hold of the other as he crouched down so he could hear what was going on inside the room. Whoever it was, they had a heavy but sure tread, and went in straight lines as if they knew exactly what they wanted to examine. Which was very little, as barely a minute later they had stopped by the window.

The shutters swung out, and Filippo lowered himself till his chin just touched the roof. A long, eerie moan made him stiffen, but then he realized it was nothing more than a disgruntled cow. Nevertheless he didn’t relax, or raise his head.

“It’s _cold_ ,” Vieri abruptly said. Nothing came out of the window, but from the loudness of the man’s voice, he must have been standing right before it. “What are you doing up there?”

Filippo only noticed he’d compressed his lips in annoyance when his mouth began to hurt. He did force himself to stop that.

“You’re a deeply suspicious man,” Vieri added, more than a trace of humor in his voice. Wood creaked and one of the shutters jerked out a few more inches—he’d leaned against the interior edge of the sill. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I would’ve done it in the mountains. And never mind your escort—you sent back to Il Mago the only one who could’ve stood more than a minute against me.”

“You broke into my room,” Filippo finally muttered.

Vieri moved again, then snorted. “Good point. But I did that because you’re suspicious. If I had knocked, you wouldn’t have talked to me.”

“I would have—”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Vieri said, in that monotone he used to state anything he thought was inarguable. Flat, holding no real challenge but not brooking any either. “The Milanese ambassador would’ve spoken to me, and he’s not interesting. He’s too important to be, no matter how humble you act. Which is not much, actually. You know.”

Frankly, Filippo didn’t. And he was irritated again, oddly enough, and not especially happy with that realization. The cold wasn’t improving either. “I apologize for—”

“I noticed you’d sent off your messenger, without needing a map from me after all.”

And then nothing, not even a rustle of clothing. Filippo had to strain his ears just to hear the other man’s breathing so he could know Vieri was still there. He silently lifted his hand to his mouth, then bit down on a finger so the pain would cut through the cold and he could think. “I never thought you intended to kill me.”

Vieri breathed a little sharper at that, but when he spoke, his voice was still as smooth and emotionless as before. “I know. That was a joke.” Then there was a rhythmic low noise, a sort of thrumming: Vieri tapping his fingers on something soft, maybe on his arm or leg. “You’re not going to be able to get to the stables from there.”

“I don’t mean to go there,” Filippo said. He hesitated a moment longer, then shook his head. After sliding his daggers back into his boots, he swung himself over the edge of the roof.

His stiff muscles didn’t make that easy, and then he was thinking that Vieri was still closer to the window than the man turned out to be. Filippo didn’t lose his balance, but he did teeter uncomfortably for a moment before his hand caught the side of the window. Then he raised his head, started at the splayed fingers and came closer to falling than before.

He caught himself on a shutter. Brows raised, Vieri withdrew his hand. Then they looked at each other, Filippo on the very edge of the sill and Vieri about a foot and a half back. The other man didn’t have his sword with him, and lacked his coat as well.

“Is even the roof better for you?” Vieri asked after a long moment. “We could’ve brought down some snow with us.”

“I didn’t intend to sleep there.” This time Filippo couldn’t keep the annoyance from his voice, so he ducked his head and at least tried to muffle it. He got off the sill, then half-turned to shut the window.

Vieri opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind with an abrupt shake of the head. He folded his arms over his chest. Then he merely stood back and watched, close-lipped, as Filippo locked the shutters in place and then, lacking anything else to do, pushed the chair back beneath its table.

“I did check the stable first.” For some reason Vieri didn’t seem to like admitting that, even going so far as to look off to the side as he spoke.

“I thought you would,” Filippo shrugged.

That made the other man look at him again, and then take a step forward; Filippo nearly jerked backwards into the window before he understood Vieri was only trying to see him better. It was dark, with the only light the few moonbeams that managed to wiggle their way through the closely-spaced frets of the shutters.

“My mother was French,” Vieri finally said. “So I don’t hate them. But I don’t like them either, and I’m not interested at all in the French king. I didn’t come with you because I wanted to make a present of you to him.”

Filippo only considered that for a moment, since he could read the tense slant of Vieri’s shoulders well enough and didn’t want to work on the man’s temper any more than he had to. “Is that what you came here to tell me?”

For several seconds Vieri simply stared at him. Then the corners of Vieri’s mouth abruptly stretched back from his teeth, and even with the dark, his eyes glittered. “Oh, God’s blood, no. I didn’t want to talk, actually. I came because I wanted to know where the hell you were sleeping. You weren’t in the loft, and I didn’t think you were going to sleep outside where people…who you might care that they care…were going to see.”

“So you picked the lock…” Filippo asked. Began to ask, in fact, but his voice trailed off as his understanding of events diminished.

Vieri untwisted one hand to make a dismissive gesture. Then he completely unfolded his hands and stepped back towards the door, which Filippo only now noticed was slightly ajar. “Because I didn’t want to wake you,” he said. He stopped with his hand on the knob, as if he could sense the way Filippo was stiffening, and then moved to the side so one foot was out the door. “Look. I’m thirty-nine. I’ve fought more battles than you’ve seen Christmases. I’ve fought so many it’s boring and so now I just fight the interesting ones. So far I’m not interested in Milan.”

Then he went out the door and shut that behind him. Filippo waited a moment, but only heard Vieri walking away. So he slowly crossed the room and locked the door. Then he looked about and saw the chair. He dragged that over to brace it under the doorknob, then stepped back and turned. It was still night, and he was still tired and sore but not anywhere near comfortable enough to risk sleeping.

In the end, Filippo got back onto his bed. He closed his eyes and remembered the one he had in Milan, and then he sighed.

* * *

In the morning Vieri absented himself from the breakfast table, but Giuly informed Filippo that that was for the same reason that he’d have to wait for the hot food, as Giuly had to do that himself. He seemed surprised when Filippo offered to help, but rapidly understood that that would give them an excuse to get away from the others.

“—should’ve known better. The traders aren’t coming through yet, so she’s got no reason to wander off without a word,” Giuly muttered, slamming down a round of dough. He turned his head and sneezed out the flour that the impact had raised into the air, then rolled his eyes at himself and gave Filippo a resigned shrug. “Oh, well. It’ll come out of her pay, and I’ll take it off your bill.”

Filippo swept aside the pig’s foot he’d just deboned, then reached for the next. “Are traders still expected?”

Giuly kneaded out the dough, then shaped it. Then he tossed it against the table again, a bit less forcefully than before. “More than before, since it looks like they’ll be able to get to the Italian fairs without having to worry about customs taxes. Savoy’s nothing these days, and Milan is next, they think.”

Savoy’s Duke commanded the all-important Alpine passes, but somehow failed to understand why such things were more important than the latest party fashion. Instead he let his bastard half-brother do what little ruling either man could rouse themselves to, which to them meant trying not to offend anyone and thus allowing France and Milan to freely plot and scheme on either side of the Duchy. He couldn’t be displaced soon enough, Filippo privately thought. The waste alone was criminal—and the Savoyard custom taxes were excruciating, to the French and to fellow Italians.

“Louis?” Filippo asked. He twisted his knife beneath the joint of the bone, then popped it out of the foot. “The nobles?”

“He has his court under control. Not much has changed since the last report I sent, unfortunately.” Giuly shrugged again, with a good deal less humor than before. He set the bread aside in a bowl to rise, then wiped off his hands on a towel. “You’d think that annulment of his would’ve set the cat among the pigeons, but it’s not even half a year and nobody’s challenging him. At least not as far as Milan is concerned. Maybe the Bourbons…they’re a bit worried that his new queen means Brittanic interests are going to be favored over all others.”

After prying the last bone from the pig’s foot, Filippo pushed that to the side and took the clean towel Giuly offered him. The fire had been lit but wasn’t yet roaring, so it was still cold in the kitchen and the bits of fat and gristle were sticking to Filippo’s skin. So he found a pail of water, and then used that to help get his fingers clean. “The Bourbons?”

Something clattered, and then Giuly moved past Filippo to prod at the fire, muttering at his truant maid and the damn wet wood. “Oh…no, not really. Louis is invading Italy. You can’t stop that now, I think. I don’t know if you even want to still go see him, to be honest.”

“If you don’t think it can be stopped, then why go on working against it?” Filippo asked, keeping his tone light and idle. He picked out a bit of a tendon from beneath his nail.

Then he looked up, and found Giuly looking straight back, the man’s mobile features suddenly still. The fire crackled, but Giuly failed to move…till a breath later, when he suddenly smiled. It had the shape and the brightness of his earlier smiles, but not the lighthearted eyes.

“Well, it’s a woman, of course,” he said. He let out a little laugh, shaking his head at himself, and threw more wood onto the fire. Then he plucked up a poker and began to rearrange the logs. “She’s married, and her husband didn’t care too much for the poetry I wrote her. So he’s with the king, and I’m out nearly into the damn Alps, an innkeeper when I should’ve at least been able to afford having my sonnets bound into a decent book.”

“A book?” The bit of gristle went up with a hiss when Filippo flicked it into the flames.

Giuly glanced at him again, a younger man’s slyness lurking in the twist of his mouth. “I was a good poet. I was read in the highest circles. If you want—”

“I don’t really have an ear for poetry,” Filippo said. He shook the excess water off his hands, then rubbed them dry on his legs as he stood up. Then he looked at the other man, who’d turned back to the fire. “The Duke and Duchess of Milan do, though.”

That brought Giuly’s head sharply around, and then he looked narrow-eyed at Filippo, gratitude and wariness warring across his face. Not…not disbelief, however. He was a clever man, to have wrung out exile instead of a quiet murder somewhere; Filippo had heard about Domenech and the man had in fact opted for that on a few occasions, according to sources Filippo deemed reputable.

“You don’t think you can stop Louis either,” Giuly finally said.

“Not while he’s in France, no. But the other side of the Alps is a different matter.” Filippo did believe that—no matter his differences with Zlatan, he believed in what he’d seen the man do, and in Paolo’s judgment in trusting him. “Anyway, I’m not here to stop Louis. I don’t think I’ll be back this way either, but my messenger will be stopping here on his way back. He won’t be returning with me.”

After a long moment, Giuly chuckled, low and rueful. “Thank you very much.”

“You’ve given good service. That does matter,” Filippo replied. Then he moved out of the way so Giuly could swing the long spit over the fire, putting the pots hanging from it into the flames.

* * *

Halfway to Briançon, a small escort from Louis met Filippo. It did not contain the man Filippo had sent ahead, but did present a familiar face at the very front. Deschamps hadn’t made himself particularly welcome in even easy-going Savoy, and even with the threat of a covetous French king backing him, he’d not managed to wrangle a firm agreement of alliance from the Savoyards. His departure from Turin hadn’t been acrimonious enough to give Louis an excuse for an invasion, but it had seen him drop precipitously from the king’s favor once he’d arrived back in Paris. Since then Filippo hadn’t heard anything to suggest that he’d risen again, but it was interesting that Louis would bring Deschamps with him on a military expedition. Then again, he did have a much stronger record on the battlefield than in the political arena.

The rest of the escort offered no more clues, being sufficiently large enough in numbers, but not of very great quality: Deschamps was the only ranked noble Filippo recognized, and he was attired quite plainly. And again, that could be easily put down to the nature of Louis’ camp.

Deschamps’ Italian was a little rusty, but his accent was tolerable. He and Filippo went through the formalities of welcome, including the expected exchange of gifts. Predictably, the ones from Louis were in line with the rest of his showing, being mostly fancied-up versions of utilitarian items—though Filippo had to suppress a feeling of relief at seeing the bottles of ink.

“I only see…” Deschamps finished, finally gazing past Filippo. His eyes slowly moved from left to right, then stopped as his eyebrows jerked up nearly the whole breadth of his forehead. “Ah. You bring some interesting companions.”

He’d clearly forgotten that the count of Filippo’s party was off by one, but overall Filippo wasn’t yet certain that the trade-off was worth it. Filippo made his expression noncommittal. “Vieri’s come in strictly a non-military capacity, as a guide. He has a unique knowledge of the Alpine passes.”

“He would.” Deschamps’ tone had considerably chilled, but he refrained from further comment and merely turned. His men parted to allow him to ride between them, then seamlessly surrounded Filippo’s group.

The other men unconsciously bunched together, but Vieri kept his horse out, till he was nearly ramming its shoulder into the flanks of the Frenchman riding beside him. When they started moving, he deliberately slowed his horse several times and thus made it clear that each of the French riders had been assigned to one of them. Then he irritably jerked himself into line slightly behind Filippo, actually using the reins for once. Their looped end snapped out so the nearest Frenchman flinched.

“Your French is good,” Vieri said to Filippo. He looked over and his mouth twitched at Filippo’s surprised expression, but failed to say anything else. Vieri also remained twisted in his saddle as if he did want a reply, and didn’t seem to care much that the French were watching that just as, if not more, closely than they’d been his antics just a moment before.

“Thank you,” Filippo finally said, looking at the countryside. Though he doubted Vieri would acknowledge the implied point—the man really wasn’t a diplomat, damn him. 

Vieri looked down at his hands as they twisted up the reins around them. The side of his mouth pulled up, till a silver of his teeth was showing. “You don’t need a translator, then.”

“I still have a strong accent.” Filippo glanced up at the sky, and in the process noted that Deschamps was openly staring at them. Then he frowned, recalling Deschamps’ accent and trying to compare it to Vieri’s—no, not the same, even when Filippo allowed for the different level of familiarity each man had with Italian. And Deschamps was from the…Aquitaine. “Though Deschamps seemed to understand it, I think.”

“Good. I hate formal meetings.” And with that, Vieri dropped even further back, till he was trailing nearly everyone. He paid no attention to the Frenchmen who were consequently forced to drop back with him, and who kept looking anxiously up towards Deschamps.

That one, on the other hand, had not quite hidden his relieved look. He’d apparently taken the whole scene as a spat—not quite what Filippo had intended, but it would do till they reached the camp. So Filippo turned forward and then worked his horse up to Deschamps, to try a little light conversation.

* * *

The king was residing in the garrison, which was where Filippo was directly taken before he could even tend to his appearance, but only to sit and wait in the hall. He did stand for the first few minutes, but when he saw the servants carrying in large platters, he found a chair and a corner that was more out of the way. One of the maids still managed to trip over his foot and Filippo barely saved the large tureen she had been carrying before it spilled all over it.

She blushed and smiled as he handed it back to her; Filippo merely nodded, but then moved the chair again to where he could see into the room when the door was opened. He noted that several of the nobles, including two Italian expatriates acted quite familiarly towards the maid, and that on at least one occasion she responded warmly. And she also smiled again at him on her way out. Another servant addressed her before she left, so Filippo had her name, but he put that aside and sat down again.

Somewhere in the town, the clock had just rung for the next hour when a chamberlain finally came for Filippo. He was already turning back towards the door before he’d even finished telling Filippo that the king would see him now.

This was not going to be a pleasant conversation, Filippo thought. He picked at his cuff, then adjusted it back to show the correct amount of wrist. Then he shrugged and walked after the chamberlain. He knew what he needed to do.

* * *

Several hours later, Filippo was finally shown to his chambers, which were small and dark and actually, a bit worse than the rooms at Giuly’s inn had been. But he was given clean hot water and some soap, so at least he could scrub the traveling dust off of himself.

Then he checked his belongings and predictably enough, discovered that they’d been searched: he’d carefully tied strands of hair to certain items and now found those all broken. Satisfied, Filippo changed his shirt and then dried his hair over the brazier in the corner while he reviewed the audience with Louis, trying to put his report together in his mind. He wouldn’t have much private time in which to write it, so he needed to be able to sit down and just draft it out the first time.

It hadn’t been a diplomatic success. Louis had alternated between wheedling and roaring, one moment reminding Filippo of his blood-claim to Milan—as if Filippo hadn’t spent enough time trying to find a way to discredit that—and the next railing against the arrogant, debauched, undeserving Italians. The treacherous Neapolitan king, the usurpers in Milan…at the latter, Filippo had a little more difficulty than usual keeping his face expressionless, since Louis would’ve said the same to the Sforzas if Paolo hadn’t wrenched Milan from them. And then after that had been gotten out of the way, Louis had calmly smoothed down his robes and asked for Filippo’s message.

Filippo had delivered that, and then had to sit through another rant as Louis tried to explain why nothing else than unconditional groveling surrender was acceptable. After that, the bargaining had begun, but Louis clearly had been more interested in what Filippo was willing to reveal about Milan’s strength than in actually coming to any resolution. As that hadn’t been much, matters had quickly stalled. Louis hadn’t offered Filippo anything to eat, either.

As if that last thought had triggered it, someone knocked at the door. It was hesitant and light, but that didn’t affect Filippo’s decision to reach down for the leg of the brazier so he could fling its hot embers if needed. “Yes?”

The reply was too muffled to make out, but Filippo understood well enough when the door opened and the maid from earlier came in with a tray of food. She smiled and bowed as she set the tray on a sideboard, apparently without any difficulty with her feet this time. “Your dinner, my lord.”

“Thank you,” Filippo said. He drifted over to eye the offerings, which surprised him by still being warm enough to let off little white wisps of steam, but otherwise consisted of decidedly inferior fare to the stuff he’d seen set before Louis. Of course he wasn’t terribly hungry anyway, but he’d gone long enough to have to eat something. Especially since the audience with the king had eliminated all possible strategies but one, and so Filippo would be busy for the rest of the night.

The maid hadn’t quite left. “If there’s anything you want changed, just…let me know? You can ask for me. My name’s—”

“Debora,” Filippo murmured, leaning over the tray. He prodded at the hunk of bread.

After a moment, a soft, low laugh came from the maid’s direction. “Oh, you know it? Of course you do. You’re an ambassador—that’s your job, isn’t it?”

“It’s part of it.” The food probably would be safe to eat without checking, since Louis would hardly gain anything by poisoning Filippo now; he and Milan were already on the brink of war, and for all his bluster he seemed to take his military camp seriously enough. He wouldn’t want the bother, however minor, of having to dispose of Filippo’s body. “And is your job to take care of me?”

Debora laughed again, her skirts rustling a little nearer. Filippo kept his lips together, but smiled at the bread as he pulled off a piece.

* * *

Something drew lightly over Filippo’s back so he started, and then finished the turn as Debora muttered under her breath. He pushed himself up on his elbow and found her bare back presented to him, with the yellow light from the brazier sloping gently over her shoulders. She had part of her dress bundled over her lap, but made no move to put that on as Filippo stretched out one hand and gently laid his fingertips against the bumps over her spine.

“You’re…well.” Another laugh, this one low and sultry, bubbled just beneath Debora’s voice. “Are all Italians like you?”

“You mean in the north?” Filippo traced around one bony bump, then slid his nail lightly around the one below it. He paused as she shivered.

Then she arched like a cat, raising her hands to lift her hair up for no apparent reason except to show off the way it shone in the dim light. “The north?

It was beautiful hair, Filippo admitted. Then he pushed himself back and around her, and got off the bed. “You’re Italian. Roman, or around there—you cursed in dialect when you tripped.”

He had been keeping his profile to her, so he saw the way her hands dropped to the folds of cloth on her lap, and how they were about to pull that taut like a rope before her eyes cooled. She shrugged, sending that lovely fall of hair down over her back again. Her voice chilled. “So what if I am?”

“I don’t know. Is where you’re from important to me?” Filippo was far enough away now, so he risked a glance at himself. He seemed to be clean enough, so he hunted up his shirt. When he found it, he pulled on the sleeves, but didn’t yet tug the rest of it over his head.

At first Debora did wait patiently, but as it became obvious that Filippo was done, a flicker of irritation passed over her face. She dropped her hands to her lap again, smoothing out her dress with a few brisk, efficient motions. Her back straightened and the planes of her face seemed to harden.

“You aren’t really here to try and negotiate anything with Louis, are you? His march into Milan can’t be stopped,” Debora finally said. She spoke simply, without emotion. Her hands drew on her dress and then pulled about her hair in a long tail, which she began to comb with her fingers, and none of those movements interrupted her voice. “You must have noticed that Louis is sheltering many exiles from Naples, from Savoy, from—”

“Not so many from Milan,” Filippo muttered. He did toss his shirt over his head then, and tugged it quickly down so he wasn’t blinded for more than a moment.

Debora lifted her chin a touch, her eyes narrowing. Then she nodded, acknowledging the point. “But among them…Trivulzio. He hated the Sforzas, but his feelings towards Duke Maldini are…somewhat more ambivalent.”

This shirt was one Filippo hadn’t worn in a while and he was a little startled to note that it hung more loosely on him than he remembered. For the moment he simply bundled up the excess fabric, but he supposed he’d have to go see a tailor sometime soon. “An interesting state of mind for the general of the French army.”

“Isn’t it,” Debora replied, and that told Filippo that Trivulzio wasn’t the one who’d sent her. She carefully separated her tail of hair into four equal strands, then plaited them together so swiftly that it seemed to happen in a single movement. “There are elements at this court who would like to see Naples fall, but who are willing to be persuaded that Milan need not suffer as well.”

“It’s a little late for that.” A touch of irritation filtered into Filippo’s voice. He was unhappy about the lapse, but mainly because it served no point to be annoyed with Debora, who wouldn’t have been responsible for the decision to ignore the feelers Paolo had put out towards the French court.

Debora looked at him, then hurriedly pushed her braid over her shoulder and then raised it so she could pin it up. Her attempt didn’t quite disguise her moment of sympathy. “It might not be, if you’re willing to risk it. But then…”

“Milan,” Filippo said stiffly, “Is not something to be risked lightly.”

“Sometimes a lack of risk leads to a downfall all the same,” Debora said curtly. She just stifled the wince that followed, then anxiously glanced at Filippo.

He ignored her in favor of picking up his hose from the floor. Filippo glanced about, saw the chair, and then sat down to finish dressing himself. Once Debora’s breath sharpened and Filippo let his hands fall still, but she said nothing afterward. So he went to putting on his boots, and then to slipping on his doublet.

“You’re not interested.” When Filippo looked up, Debora had finished neatening herself and was sitting primly on the edge of the rumpled mattress, her hands folded over her knees.

“I’m not interested in any case. I’m merely a representative for Milan, and Milan…is not interested in making heavy concessions on the very eve. At this point, if she’s to lose, she prefers to do so openly.” Filippo shrugged. The motion twisted part of his collar and he straightened that before going on. “At least, that was what I was told, and I follow that till I’m told differently.”

Debora watched him button up his doublet, head slightly tilted to the side. The corners of her mouth pulled slightly, perhaps as if she wanted to smile in some way, but in the end she merely flicked at her skirts as she stood. She paused a moment longer, then quietly gathered up the tray and left.

For a moment Filippo thought about calling after her, but then he realized he’d be going by the kitchens anyway so it didn’t matter that she’d taken the food before he could have more than a few bites. His appetite was still prominently absent, but by now his hunger was great enough to be a bit of a distraction. Some bread and a little watered wine, he thought, and then picked up his bag.

* * *

By the time Filippo returned to his room, the first rays of dawn were beginning to streak the sky, but the servants hadn’t yet gotten around to lighting the lanterns or the scones on the walls so it was still very dark inside the castle. Dark enough—and he was tired enough—to force him to find his way about by keeping one hand running along the wall as he walked.

He turned the last corner and his hand abruptly slid into empty space. Filippo began to pull it back, but something seized his wrist and then instinct sent him sideways. His shoulder knocked up painfully against the side of a doorway, but then—

Light suddenly flared into the hall so Vieri’s face emerged in the midst of a murderous red pool of it. He stared at Filippo, his eyes like entrances to an endless abyss.

Then they flicked down, towards the stiletto Filippo had pricking between his third and fourth rib. Vieri’s eyebrows rose. “Not bad.”

He dropped Filippo’s wrist and stepped back; Filippo flipped the stiletto about and had it back up his sleeve before Vieri had finished shifting his weight to his trailing foot. Then he began to rub at his sore wrist. Filippo squinted down at the joint to see if it was bruising before looking up at the other man.

Instead he was looking at Debora’s startled face, as she held up a lantern so its rays lit up the doorway. Beside her was Vieri’s arm and shoulder, but those disappeared as he went back into his room.

“Oh,” Debora said.

Vieri was behind her now, having stopped just inside the room. The man was pulling at his clothing—he’d not been decent when he’d assaulted Filippo—but he paused from that to look up. His frown went from Debora to Filippo, and then quickly back to Debora. Then to Filippo’s still empty hands, and only then did Vieri look surprised. Surprised and, curiously, disappointed.

After another moment, Filippo made a slight bow and backed out the few inches he needed to be fully in the hall. He walked the last few yards to his room and was on the point of going in when he heard a slight noise.

Debora had come out of the room and towards him. She was fully dressed, but her hair was unbound again. She stared at him, her mouth slightly moving but no words coming from it.

It was late—early, Filippo corrected himself. He rubbed at his wrist. “Were you going to bring it up at all, or just suggest I meet you somewhere, and then I could run into your lord?”

“The second,” Debora said after a moment. She looked down, then threw back her shoulders and raised her head. Then she suddenly chuckled, whisper-low and wry. “I wasn’t planning on going—I’d beg off because I had duties, and tell you we’d finish later. But you were that good.”

“Thank you,” Filippo said. Then he reached for the knob again. “I was not in a position to see you just now because I was sleeping, and Vieri…is here because while Milan does appreciate the worth of his services, she doesn’t need them.”

She was still looking at him when he closed the door behind himself, Filippo knew. But she was an intelligent woman, able to think on her feet—even if she did stumble occasionally. She was young and beautiful, so likely she’d have the time to grow out of that. And she probably would.

As for him…Filippo looked at his bed, at the soiled, tangled sheets. He wasn’t going to sleep tonight.

* * *

When it was a reasonable hour, a chamberlain came to inform Filippo that Louis had no interest in talking any further, so he could take that message back to the Duke of Milan. As soon as possible.

Filippo would’ve forewent breakfast if he’d had a choice, but his men apparently had assumed that they were going to be in Briançon for quite a while and had spent their night in dependence on that belief. They were tough soldiers, but they still needed a good dunking of the head in ice-water and a good meal in order to get them into shape for the road. So they did that, and Filippo spent the time writing up his reports with the ink the French king had given to him. He turned out to need it, since he was making several copies, but nevertheless he would rather have done that when they’d stopped for the night, much closer to the border.

They, were, however, fortunate enough to have gotten out of the town and well down the road before that suspicion became truth.

“What’s that?” Vieri barked, abruptly reining in his horse. He nearly had it blunder hindquarters-first into Filippo’s mount before he averted that at the last moment.

Vieri had been disagreeable and openly moody from the moment Filippo saw him again, so at first Filippo thought the other man was merely trying to pick another quarrel. But then he saw that Vieri was standing in his stirrups, and turned as well to squint at the tiny but growing specks further up the road.

“That would be Louis,” Filippo said, raising his reins. “ _Go_.”

“What—” Wheeling sharply about, Vieri stared at Filippo.

The other men didn’t hesitate, but immediately took off, each in a different direction. Likewise, Filippo braced his feet in his stirrups and slapped the slack of his reins against his horse’s flanks as hard as he could.

The animal literally leaped forward, so that for one second, Filippo felt as light as a feather. And then the horse’s forefeet hit the ground, and despite his care Filippo was nearly thrown off. Only a hard blow to his shoulder saved him, though it made him lose hold of his reins.

Those flapped back to whip painfully against his side before they suddenly vanished. Filippo didn’t have the opportunity to see what was the matter, too preoccupied with clinging for his life to the saddlehorn, but he did notice that his horse’s galloping abruptly shifted, as that banged his knee into the saddle. He yanked himself down as close as he could to the beast’s back; more of him was knocked about and bruised that way, but he felt much less likely to fall off.

He could hear shouting now, and at first it seemed to be growing in volume so he began considering the knife in his boot. But then, very slowly, the voices began to recede—Filippo knew better than to relax at that, and so he wasn’t so startled when the horse came to a brutally abrupt stop. His knees and the side of his face suffered, but he’d already forgotten about the pain by the time he was dragged from the saddle.

Filippo sank in his fingers, then jammed his teeth together as he was shaken, roughly but just the once. Then he stared up at Vieri—the man had lost his scarf and his tangled hair was all but obscuring the brilliant light in his eyes.

“No damn daggers yet, all right?” Vieri snapped. “Wait a moment.”

Then he dragged Filippo away before Filippo could reply. He had Filippo by the forearms, and somehow he kept that hold so Filippo’s view was mainly of Vieri’s shoulder. The rest of it was in jolting, blurry glimpses: budding branches, the peak of a roof, a rounded wooden bar and then a good deal of hay. The straw got into Filippo’s eyes and scratched at his face, but when he made to sit up, Vieri pushed him back down and then flopped down beside Filippo—partly on Filippo, his arm alone enough to weight Filippo beyond struggling.

A barn, Filippo thought. He heard voices coming from much closer now, probably from the owners…the mistress of the farm. She was greeting some French soldiers, and then she screamed and in the middle of the scream, was cut off.

No other sound, so probably she’d only been struck silent. At any rate, she was no longer a concern, whereas the hard thumping footsteps coming into the barn were. They walked the full length of the barn, then stopped and exclaimed over the horses wandering just outside the other side. Filippo winced.

Vieri…Vieri tapped his fingers on Filippo’s back, and when Filippo risked a glance at the man, Vieri was rolling his eyes in impatience. By the time the one soldier had returned to the middle of the barn, the drumming on Filippo’s back was hard enough to make Filippo bite the inside of his mouth.

“Those are theirs—”

Smooth as a piece of silk running through fingers, Vieri launched himself over the edge of the loft. His sword was already unsheathed by the time he’d dropped from Filippo’s view. The Frenchman never finished his sentence, and his compatriot didn’t have time to start one.

By the time Filippo had rolled over to the ladder and climbed down, Vieri had already stripped both bodies. He looked up at Filippo, then tossed Filippo one of the dead soldiers’ coats. The other one he kept for himself, exchanging it for his own coat, which he then used to bundle up one corpse and carry them into the loft.

He came back down when Filippo was still tucking his coat around the other body. Still on the ladder, Vieri grunted so Filippo looked at him, and then shook his head. “You’re so thin. You eat about as much as you sleep. I saw you stuffing all your food into your saddlebags.”

Filippo caught himself pulling up his coat-sleeve so it wouldn’t fall over his hand. He shrugged and got up, then busied himself with moving the bare essentials from their saddlebags into those on the Frenchmen’s horses. After that he checked on the woman, who was lying unconscious before her front door; Filippo moved her inside before locking the door. Then he turned his and Vieri’s horses loose and sent them running into the fields with hard slaps on the flanks.

“Milan will compensate you for that,” he said when he heard Vieri come out.

“Oh, for…I left the ones I liked at home. And anyway, this one’s better—why you do think I bothered killing those men?” Vieri grabbed the front and back of the saddle on his new horse, paused, and then twisted about. Before Filippo could stop him, he’d seized Filippo and tossed him up into the saddle as easily as a mother caught up her child.

Then he was on his own horse, and clucking so Filippo’s mount went after him before Filippo had even settled himself, let alone touched the reins. Filippo grabbed for the pommel and ended up with a double fistful of the horse’s mane as the beast suddenly stepped sideways.

“We’ll go parallel with the mountains for a bit, like we’re searching, and then head into them when we’re farther from the others.” Vieri turned his horse about and looked hard at Filippo. “Can you stay on him for that long? He’s not so quiet as the other one.”

“I can do whatever I need to,” Filippo muttered.

The other man snorted, then turned again to ineffectively disguise a smile. But that only lasted as long as it took for Vieri to yank a scarf from a saddlebag and wrap it about his head, concealing the notable blond curls. Then he looked at Filippo again, eyes narrowed. “Did you just bring me because you knew I’d distract everyone? With my reputation?”

Filippo hesitated, surprising himself. Then he gave himself a shake; it hardly mattered now what Vieri thought of him, if that’d ever been significant in the first place. “Basically.”

“You.” This snort was more muffled since it was through the scarf, but it was no less derisive. “I wish you’d told me,” Vieri added. “I wouldn’t have been so polite to everyone.” He reached over and grabbed Filippo’s reins, and then grinned while his hand was still a few inches from Filippo’s white-knuckled grip on the pommel. “Yes, that was being polite. So what was that back there for?”

“Tri—” Filippo started. Then he had to stop, as their horses set off at a very brisk trot and he was distracted by the new thumping against already sore limbs. He gritted his teeth and concentrated on his answer to Vieri. “Trivulzio. He’s too effective, and the French army is too big with Nesta still stuck guarding against the papal armies.”

Vieri glanced back. “You killed him?”

“Poisoned. He’ll recover. But not in time for this campaign.” The horse stumbled and Filippo bit his lip till the blood came.

“You should’ve just killed him,” Vieri muttered.

Filippo made his breath slow, then stop. Then he inhaled sharply, and exhaled gradually, and by the end of that, he’d more or less put the aching aside. He pulled the reins out of Vieri’s hands, then slipped them inexpertly but firmly through his fingers. “That is why you’re not a diplomat.”

Vieri laughed. “But you’re a rider. Actually. And a man. You’re just not very good at it. Either.”

Then he hastened his horse and pulled away before Filippo could reply. And by the time Filippo did, he’d run out of time to waste on petty matters like that, and had to swallow his retort. It was an odd, alien sensation, and Filippo wasn’t entirely certain he cared for it.

* * *

Twice they were hailed by other pairs of French soldiers, but each time Vieri managed to shout back an acceptable excuse. He put on an impeccable accent for that, so close to that of the soldiers’ that Filippo felt a twinge of jealousy in his chest. Foreign languages he could learn, but never better than functional.

“We need to make the foothills by sundown,” Vieri muttered. “That might be enough to lose them.”

“A little longer and we’d be in the mountains proper.” Filippo raised his brows at the questioning look he received in reply. “It’d be better, wouldn’t it?”

For a moment Vieri simply looked at Filippo, silent and assessing, as if they were back to how it had been before. But then he frowned, and reached out to tap Filippo’s shoulder. “You don’t have a mirror. So I’ll tell you—you need to eat and drink, and get off that horse before you faint.”

“So we’ll stop to rest, and then go again,” Filippo said. He bit back a sigh at the expression on Vieri’s face. “I know how I am. I know better than you—I’ve learned what I can do, and for how long. So that’s not your concern.”

“What’s the hurry? They won’t delay things too long just because of you…especially if Trivulzio’s only sick, not dead. And Louis has artillery to shift—a few days more won’t keep you from getting to Milan before he does.” Vieri still had his arm stretched out, though the motion of the horses had made them drift so his fingers were no longer touching Filippo’s shoulder. He flexed their tips, then pulled back his arm and rubbed his fingers and thumb together, looking down at that. “Aren’t you done?”

Filippo laughed before he could help it, then clapped his mouth shut. He stared straight ahead of him for quite a while before he realized Vieri was still waiting for an answer. And the man would wait, he knew now.

“I’m never done,” he said. He rolled his shoulders, then gingerly flexed his thighs and calves to briefly ease the strain on them. “Where are we stopping to eat?”

* * *

The little stream was icy with melting snow from the mountains so it quickly chilled the bottle of wine Vieri had set in it. He took a swig, nodded, and then handed it to Filippo. When Filippo refused, Vieri shrugged but put the bottle down between them. “It’s a good red, actually. And they’re rankers.”

They’d had some food in their storage bags as well, which mostly seemed to consist of leftovers—some of them scraps Filippo recognized from the royal table, so apparently the two soldiers had had a friend in the kitchens. A day later the spices were overpowering so Filippo only picked off small bits. He tried to think about how likely it was that the others had gotten away and how much further he and Vieri could travel this day instead of about how the food tasted.

“Those horns earlier was them calling it off for the night,” Vieri added. “We’re away. Maybe they got one of the others.” He stuffed his piece of bread into his mouth, ripped away the sliver that didn’t fit, and then chewed as he reached for the wine again. “I’m not going to get drunk off this.”

“I didn’t say you were.” Filippo had heard the horns as well, and had thought they were sounding a little early. Probably one of them had been caught—he spared a moment to pray for the poor man, then went back to considering the mountains before him. Then he put another pinch of food in his mouth and glimpsed Vieri staring at him. “It doesn’t matter if they catch the others. They’re not carrying the correct reports. I am.”

“Clever.” Vieri took another pull at the bottle, then half-rose. “And poor bastards,” he added.

His tone was strange, both detached and too familiar. Then he flicked a look at Filippo as he walked over to the stream, where he dumped out the rest of the bottle. After giving that a few last shakes, he made as if to fling the bottle into the trees that surrounded them, but at the last moment he put down his arm. Grimaced, and then grasped the back of his neck as if he had a cramp there.

“You mind?” He looked at Filippo.

For a moment Filippo didn’t understand the question. He saw something move at the edge of his sight and glanced over to find his hand rising. Frowning, he put that down. “No.”

“Well, probably not. That’s your work, after all.” After massaging his neck, Vieri swung both arms behind himself and then stretched them straight out. He could lift them in that position a good deal higher than most people. “It’s a good tactic. Dummies. You dress so badly it’s probably worked, too.”

“They might not know the land but they’ve all got experience in difficult situations. There’s a good chance—”

“Would you bet on it?” Vieri had twisted his head around to look over his shoulder.

After a few seconds, Filippo bent his head and simply put one last morsel into his mouth. “I don’t bet.” He chewed, swallowed, and then got up. “But I think you would.”

“Well, then, they’ll live. I don’t bet to lose,” Vieri said. From anyone else his tone would have been mocking, or perhaps coquettish, but he was too earthy for that. He shrugged, rubbing at his neck again. “Actually, I don’t really care. If they live, fine. If not, fine.”

Filippo looked at him, then carefully got down in a squat by the stream. He rinsed his hands and then his face, wincing a little at the coldness of the water. Then he put his hands together in a scoop and quickly lifted a double handful of water to his mouth. Even though he was expecting it by then, the first sip felt like a burn down his throat—a searing lightning bolt and then as it spread out in his body, a long painful shiver.

“You care.” Now Vieri sounded surprised.

“It doesn’t matter. If they make it, they’ll be richly paid for the services they’ve rendered Milan. If they don’t, their families will compensated for the loss. They knew that when they started out with me,” Filippo said. He drew a careful breath, and when he found that the burn had somewhat subsided, drank a little more water. It was just as painful as before, but it’d be worse in the mountains so he had to drink his fill here. “They all hate France. And Milan’s more important to me than they are.”

The boots beside him shuffled so a small avalanche of pebbles cascaded into the stream. Then Vieri turned so his shadow fell over Filippo, and the day was so advanced by then that it seemed as if night had come. “You never told me this. Never told me about splitting, either—what were you doing? Wait and see?”

The water dripped through Filippo’s shaking fingers, which had turned a furious red as the heat had been stolen from them. He swung aside his palms to let them empty, then pressed them to his jaw; a hiss escaped from him, and then he half-closed his eyes. He nodded.

Vieri laughed a little, and Filippo closed his eyes the rest of the way. “You came for your own reasons, this entire time. But I don’t know enough to guess at what they are, I don’t know your attachments,” Filippo said. “It seemed best to let you decide what you wanted to do.”

Above him the laughter stopped, as if it had been beheaded by a sword. Filippo opened his eyes and looked up, blinking in inexplicable surprise when he found Vieri’s head still squarely on his shoulders. The reddish light of dusk seemed to bloody everything except for the man’s hair, which shone like polished gold. Refined to the highest quality, and then there was his face in the center of it, with its blunt-ended fighter’s nose and heavy brow and scars, both in his flesh and in the look he was giving Filippo.

“I don’t understand what you are. You say you’re a diplomat, but you’ve got a face like somebody made a rat human. You creep about at night, you don’t have normal appetites—you don’t even have much of a sense of humor,” Vieri abruptly said. He shook his head, then lifted it to squint up at the mountains. “I don’t see it.”

Filippo sucked in his breath, then slowly let it out while pressing one hand to his breast. He’d felt a sharp prickle there, and he hadn’t felt that in a while. He’d believed he’d trained that particular reaction out of himself. Since it was useless to take offense at the truth, after all. “No…I’m not handsome or charming. People don’t like me, or if they do, it’s not for very long. They’re like you—they get frustrated with not understanding it. But I can organize spies and collect information—and I have excellent timing. I tend to say the right thing at the right time. I tend to act at the right time, and I don’t shy away from whatever happens to be the most efficient way. So I’m not appealing, but I’m the best.”

“No, not _that_.” And Vieri wheeled about with a suddenness that was almost savage, his hands coming forward so Filippo instinctively jerked up onto his toes. But then the other man pulled his fingers away, muttering to himself. “Why Milan? I know Paolo, I know…he always had an eye for beauty. Sometimes he did see it where others didn’t, but mostly his tastes were like everyone else.”

“That’s true,” Filippo said slowly. He looked away, at the stream, and then scooped up a last mouthful of water. Then he wiped his hands on his legs as he got up, rubbing hard to get the heat back into his fingers. “But Paolo—Milan doesn’t see what something’s not. There I’ve never been expected to be anything but what I am, and there’s no disappointment in what that is. There’s just an expectation that I’ll be the best at it, and as long as that is also true…I have a place.”

He turned to go back to the horses—hobbled and browsing at the scant foliage—but fingers curled around his left upper arm. Filippo had been in the middle of taking a step and he had to put his foot down to retain his balance, and in doing so inadvertently pulled at the grip. It pulled back, and then he was staring at Vieri’s face.

Then at Vieri’s brow, and then at some blurry stretch of flesh as something pressed against his upper lip. The spot was warm when Vieri withdrew, and then still oddly tingling when Filippo raised an uncertain hand to wipe at it. His fingers came away a little damp at the tips.

“That was because you aren’t going to like me in a little bit,” Vieri told the question in Filippo’s face. He shrugged, grunted into one hand that he then swept through his hair, and stalked off towards the horses. “I know you don’t care, but I don’t care much what you think about it.”

Filippo stared after him, till Vieri had mounted his horse and turned it to stare back. Then he gave himself a shake. He started to bundle up his remaining food, but a thought occurred to him—he grimaced and pushed it aside, rapidly wrapping up the food. And after he’d gotten on his horse, he stuffed it into his saddlebag and ignored Vieri’s expression. “Let’s go.”

* * *

If Vieri was following a trail, Filippo saw no sign of it. Every step they took was forced through the thick brush, and frequently Vieri had to hack them clear with his sword. It was still early enough in the year so that the leaves were largely still buds, but that fact didn’t ease the way too much. And the ground was much rougher and inclined much more sharply than it had been along the way that they’d entered France.

“Fuck,” Vieri muttered, shaking some twigs free of his sword. He kneed his horse through the narrow gap he’d just created, then stopped to wait for Filippo. “Fuck. We’re leaving a track as wide as a wagon.”

Filippo ducked a whippy low-hanging branch, then decided he might as well stay lying along the horse’s back. He’d managed to remain in the saddle, but aside from that his rudimentary horsemanship was completely overwhelmed by the difficulty of the situation and he’d long since given up even holding the reins. Now those were bound to Vieri’s saddle-horn, and Filippo merely attempted not to upset his horse, who unfortunately had proved to have a high-strung nature and who started frequently at minor distractions.

Vieri looked up at the dark, clouded sky, which allowed them so little moonlight that Filippo had no way to assess the veracity of Vieri’s opinion on the their track, even if he’d thought that that would be worth the effort. “ _Fuck_. It’s going to rain.”

“Rain? Or snow?” Filippo told his horse’s neck. Low under his breath.

Though Vieri heard him anyway, and offered a grim smile in reply before he turned forward again. “You just make it sound all the worse. Oh, a cave. That’ll be useful.”

It took them half an hour of dogged progress to arrive at the cave’s lip. To be honest, the place was little more than a two-sided windbreak with a bit of a roof, but it had a good view of the area below. Their horses crowded beneath the overhang the moment they were allowed to, leaving Filippo and Vieri no choice but to settle next to the beasts and hope that they didn’t panic and kick out. On the other hand, Vieri deemed the lack of any sign of the French for the past few hours to be insufficient to say they were safe and ruled out the possibility of building a fire, so the warmth of the horses’ bodies was a welcome source of heat.

And then it began to sleet, a light drizzle for about an hour and then a hard, pummeling fall of icy water as the wind picked up. The horses protested loudly for a while, stamping their feet. Then they seemed to realize the futility of that and simply let their heads hang low, eyes closed against the miserable weather.

The Frenchman’s coat was leather, which was heavy and negatively affected Filippo’s balance when he was on the horse, but off it, he was grateful. It kept out the rain and smothered him in his own heat, so as long as he kept his head beneath it, he was dry and as comfortable as he could be. The bulge of rock beneath his hip and the other one prodding his ribs was going to make riding very unpleasant tomorrow, but—

“You’re ignoring everything again, aren’t you?” A few inches away, Vieri was a similar bundle of slick dark leather, although unlike Filippo’s, his coat wasn’t large enough to cover all of him. He’d had to use one of the saddles to protect his legs and feet. “How long did it take you to learn to do that?”

“Most of my life,” Filippo said after a moment. He shivered as a sudden gust of wind managed to find its way beneath his coat and into the seams of his clothing. When it unexpectedly carried on blowing, he twisted away from it without thinking and bumped up against the other man. He immediately made to move back, but one of the horses moved before he could and blocked off that…opportunity.

Vieri felt like a wall. Not of stone: he yielded slightly, though his knee knocked a little painfully against Filippo’s shin when Filippo accidentally elbowed him. He was as warm as the horses. “You’re not pretty, but you’re not the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“My brother has the looks.” Filippo heard something and blinked, startled. Then he began to settle against the rock, but the low, grumbling noise came again, and this time it was accompanied by a hard enough cramp in his stomach to make it clear what was the matter.

He was…embarrassed, actually. Beside him Vieri twisted and cursed and flapped leather—once splashing water into Filippo’s face—but Filippo merely rubbed at his eyes and didn’t look to see what the man was doing. When something was pushed into his hand, he frowned at it in surprise.

“Eat, damn it. God, I look at you and my stomach hurts. Sometimes I wonder how you don’t break, when somebody takes you to bed.” Vieri was busy trying to lie down without exposing any limb to the rain, so Filippo couldn’t see his expression. He hadn’t sounded particularly serious, or particularly mocking. “I have a brother. I think.”

“Think?” Filippo echoed. He propped himself up on one elbow—the wind got him again and he flinched—and unwrapped the bundle Vieri had given him. The food…he couldn’t see the food, but he could faintly smell it and he let that direct his hand.

“I haven’t seen him in a couple years. He’s a sailor. We both were, most of the time when we were young. You’ve probably noticed I still have the accent,” Vieri replied. A strange sort of breath came from him, something like a sigh but rougher. “He’s with the Venetians. The last time we ran into each other, he said he wanted to see Asia.”

If he was any good, then he probably was still alive. The Venetians were very careful with their skilled men, even if the work they demanded of them beggared belief sometimes. But then, Vieri should know that. At one point he’d worked for Venice as well.

As Filippo ate, the gnawing feeling in his stomach went away, but otherwise he didn’t feel any difference. It was too cold to even taste much of the food, let alone think about enjoying it, and that would’ve been too strange with the tight space and awful wind and the constant suspicion of men hunting them. “Simone’s a…he works in a bank.”

“Important?”

“Not really.” But Filippo had paused, and he could see the way Vieri’s coat had briefly quivered over a soundless laugh. “It keeps him away from the politics and the military. He’s got a son, so he needs to do that.”

Vieri lifted the edge of his coat so he could look out at Filippo. All that was visible of him was a slight glitter that marked his eyes, and the occasional flash of teeth. “So you’ve got none. Wife? Mistress?” The tips of his fingers slowly emerged as he pushed out his hand and tore off a piece of Filippo’s cheese. “That girl…I don’t think she compared you too unfavorably.”

Filippo stopped with a pinch of food nearly to his mouth. He blinked, put the food in, and then ducked his head to push at his lips that were curving in spite of himself.

“You never get _upset_ ,” Vieri muttered, irritated. Then he pulled back his coat a little more, his mouth open, but instead of going on he stared at Filippo. “Wait. You’re laughing at me.”

“No. Well. Sorry.” A bit of meat wedged itself between two of Filippo’s back teeth and became annoying. First he tried chewing another morsel to try and naturally dislodge it, but when that only seemed to force it in farther, he slipped a finger into his mouth. He finally managed to dig out the meat with his nail, and then flicked the bit off into the dark. “You know she was an agent, don’t you? Of one of the Neapolitans at Louis’ court, I think.”

After a moment, Vieri snorted and sat back. “No. Did you poison her, too?”

“No,” Filippo said. He prodded at the remaining food. “I don’t do that lightly. It’s all—”

“—for Milan, like you told me before. You’re not even from there—you’re some peasant from the countryside, and you love this city so much, that doesn’t even like you most of the time. When you’re not the best any more, then what are they going to do with you?” This time Vieri twisted about so violently that his horse whinnied and skittered sideways. He instantly stilled, but the animal took a considerable time to settle down.

That cramp in his stomach had subsided, so Filippo rewrapped the food and then put it under his arm. He wasn’t quite certain where the saddlebags were, and he knew if he tried to turn, he’d not be able to keep himself as dry as Vieri had. Then he started: a hand had closed over the bundle while he’d been considering all that. Before he’d relaxed, Vieri took the food and put it away, and then straightened out again.

“I’m glad Zlatan wasn’t stupid enough to offer me a position in the army,” Vieri abruptly said. He rolled over onto his side, briefly showing part of his stomach before he pulled down his coat. “I’m not that good for the way they make war now. I don’t want to be, with what I’ve seen. And it’ll just get worse.”

“Where have you been?” Filippo asked. Then he pressed his fingers to his mouth, a little late. His hand was as cold as when he’d been using it to dip up water from the stream.

He didn’t think Vieri was going to answer, even before the other man let the silence stretch on and on between them. But then Vieri shifted, cleared his throat. “You get used to seeing the bodies. Bled-out, mangled, burned, plague-ridden, bloated from drowning or rot…you get used to it. You don’t even see them after a while. They’re just things, like chaff left after you thresh the wheat. And then one day you look down and then you follow the guts back to the man, and you see bodies again. No, you don’t—you don’t just see bodies. You see you’ve spent your whole damn life fighting someone else’s battles, getting things in payment that aren’t really worth…anything. And you don’t care, actually. You’re too old to, and if you changed that now, you’d just go mad. But you remember you used to.”

Filippo’s fingers had warmed, but he kept them pushed against his mouth. He didn’t feel ill, but he did feel…that there was nothing he could say. It was habit—silent diplomats often were losing ones—to try and think of something, not perceptiveness.

“Those couple years my family had a farm…I thought I missed that. I do miss it. I wish my father had stuck out the bad harvests instead of moving to where we ended up in a fucking army again,” Vieri said, slow and careful and thoughtful. His voice had softened from its hard, caustic tone a moment before, but not precisely from nostalgia. “But I’m no farmer. I’ve figured that out. That’s where I was.”

“So what are you?” Filippo asked. He scratched at his jaw, then tucked his hand back beneath himself.

Vieri was frowning when he peered out at Filippo. “You should know. You can see—I’m a soldier. Not your general, your officer now…but I can still fight.” He laughed. “That’s my work. I know that now…you knew what yours was your whole life, and never had to check. I’d bet on that.”

The sleet was beginning to slacken, Filippo realized. He squinted up at the black sky and thought he could make out a few places where the clouds were thinning. “I do get upset. I just never think it’s very important, compared to what I can do.”

“I suppose that’s good for your work, but it makes you a little stupid about some things,” Vieri said, casual and low. His coat lifted and then he stretched out his arm to drop it around Filippo’s shoulders. He pulled once, then let out an exasperated breath. “I’m getting wet, damn it.”

So Filippo let Vieri pull him over, till they were sharing their coats. The other man put down his hand so his arm was resting on Filippo’s back, and then laid down on his belly. He propped up his chin on his other arm, and the last thing Filippo saw was Vieri staring out at the lessening rain.

* * *

Vieri didn’t bring up Filippo’s falling asleep. He didn’t have time: they woke and then they were pushing into the mountains again, travelling nearly nonstop. Once or twice the steep walls of the valleys seemed to carry the echoes of troops marching, but they never got near enough to be a real concern. And then they were in the mountains proper, trudging through snow and ice, praying with every uncertain step that the horses didn’t break a leg. One mount wouldn’t be able to get them into Italy quickly enough, with the little supplies that they had.

Food was not too much of a problem, since Vieri proved to be a superb hunter and usually had their dinner collected by the time they’d stopped for the midday meal, but the cold was more difficult. The pass they were using now was higher than the one they’d used to come into France, so their clothing wasn’t quite thick enough. Even Vieri shivered, and kept his hands tucked into his sleeves whenever possible. If they were thirsty, he had to build a fire to heat the water so it was warm enough to safely drink.

That was how it was: Vieri did nearly everything, and it was obvious that their chances were best if he did. Filippo felt useless for a short spell at the very beginning, and then never let himself have that thought again. He concentrated on not being a hindrance to his horse, which seemed to have been sufficiently cowed by Vieri to not be too flighty, and on not responding to Vieri’s frequent frustrated outbursts. Usually Vieri calmed down by the time Filippo’s horse had walked on past him, and then he would be silent for the next few hours. He seemed to prefer it that way—they didn’t talk except when they absolutely had to—and Filippo honestly didn’t mind the lack of conversation either. He was still uncertain as to what he thought of the talks they’d already had, but didn’t want to become preoccupied with the matter to the point of carelessness.

The sleeping arrangements also left Filippo feeling rather questionable, but the conditions and Vieri didn’t allow for any discussion there. It was too cold for them to sleep separately, even with a fire to warm them, and every night Vieri dropped down to curl or wrap Filippo into him before Filippo could even finish lying down. Sometimes Filippo had been sitting, still busy trying to mend a tear in his clothing or something like that, but Vieri never seemed to pay any attention to that.

Then again, that wasn’t that disturbing. What actually bothered him, Filippo concluded, was that every single time, he fell asleep. Everything else aside, he hadn’t been so well-rested in years.

* * *

Even after they’d come out of the mountains, they still had to be careful. The first village they stopped at was swirling with rumors that the French were in the mountains, and if they were caught in Savoy and Louis asked for them, the Savoyard Duke wouldn’t have any compunctions about turning them over to save his own skin.

But Filippo could finally get his hands on news and tap into his network of informants, and he plunged into that with a desperate gratitude that—well, Vieri remarked sarcastically on it long after Filippo had already silently told himself to stop. Except that he found he couldn’t, and so ignored the other man. He shouldn’t have done that either, since the moment they’d stepped back into Italy, Vieri’s mood had dramatically soured. Part of it was that unlike in France, Vieri was much too recognizable to the local populace so he had to leave most matters to Filippo, and he obviously disliked the inaction.

Part of it, Filippo mused, was that they were staying in inns again and he was up most of the night writing and doing other work instead of bothering with the bed. Then he flinched, and went back to reading the terse, coded message he’d received with his dinner.

“What?” Vieri snapped. He was, uncharacteristically, lingering over his meal at the other end of the table.

“Signore Nesta’s scuffled with some papal troops and kept Cesare Borgia from joining Louis. The Pope is threatening to excommunicate Milan, but so far Venice’s pressure is keeping him from doing that. They’re honoring the way the Duke stood with them during the treaty negotiations four years ago. For once.” Filippo paused to decipher the next few lines in his head. He happened to glance down and saw the table rocking slightly, so he looked up to find Vieri moodily pushing at the table-leg with his knee. “Zlatan’s moved to Novara.”

Vieri tapped his knife against the side of his plate, then flipped it about to cut off another piece of meat. He washed that down with a deep draft of wine. “Just to resupply. He’ll want a pitched battle, not a siege.”

Zlatan had said as much before Filippo had left, and anyway, they all remembered that four years ago, Louis—then merely Duke of Orléans—had let himself be pent up in Novara by Nesta and Zlatan and consequently had forced his cousin Charles to drastically alter his invasion of Italy. “Will he stay long enough for us to catch up with him?”

“He’ll stay in the area. That’ll be where the fighting will be,” Vieri said. He tapped his plate again. “When we get there, I’m finding some place in the army for the battle.”

Filippo looked up, but didn’t speak for several seconds. He watched Vieri push aside his plate and then finish off the dregs of his wine. “As an officer?”

“As whatever I need to be to fight.” The other man got up and headed for the door. Before Filippo could say anything more, Vieri slipped out into the hall.

He didn’t slam the door behind him, but pulled it quietly shut so Filippo could watch the knob twist back about to its resting position. For a few seconds, Filippo pictured it covered in the remainder of his dinner.

Then he looked down at his plate. He put his hand to the edge of it, drew a breath, and then pushed it away. If his appetite had been failing before, it was wholly absent now. But…he had work. He looked at the door again, and then went back to reading the paper.

Vieri didn’t come back till the morning, when he arrived with the servant who was bringing their breakfast. He didn’t say where he had spent the night, though Filippo could look at his clothes and neck and hazard a guess, at least for part of it. But Filippo didn’t ask, and when Vieri sat down to eat he used the same casual motions as at any other breakfast, mumbled his way through grace the same way. His expression was the resentful frown that he presented to the world every other day. It was like the first day they’d set out for France.

“You didn’t sleep,” he said at one point.

Filippo hesitated, then shook his head. He hadn’t, and he was strangely tired now, as if he’d never gone a night without a single moment’s rest before.

“Novara?” Vieri asked.

“Yes,” Filippo said.

Then they got on the road again.

* * *

Zlatan wasn’t at Novara when they reached it, but he’d left a sizable garrison there and they directed Filippo on towards Zlatan’s actual camp, a day’s hard ride away at Annone. By the time Filippo arrived there, he was receiving accurate, very recent reports on the movements of the French army, which had crossed the mountains and was due to arrive within the month.

“He’s mad,” Zlatan laughed. He threw himself into the nearest chair, which creaked dangerously, and let his legs sprawl so his bootheels dug twin arcing grooves in the dirt. “He should have waited a little, and then maybe Borgia would have Sandro so busy that I’d have to send some men there to help. But he’s too mad.”

“Trivulzio isn’t in command either, so I understand.” Filippo put down the Savoyard communiqués and picked up the pitcher that was sitting next to them. He poured himself a glass of water—they were on the cusp of summer and beginning to feel the impending heat—before sitting down.

“A stomach illness.” The laughter was still in Zlatan’s eyes as he stretched his arms before him, but it had darkened. He lifted his chin as he looked at Filippo. “That was nice. You couldn’t just kill him?”

Sometimes Filippo wondered if working with Nesta would be less trying of his ability to disguise his mood, but unfortunately Nesta’s contacts in the papal states were actually better than Filippo’s own. “No. Trivulzio has too many friends and family members still in Italy. And besides, that would have been assassination by Milan and that would’ve weakened our moral standing with the other cities. At the moment Louis is overreacting to what could easily have been nothing more than spoiled beef.”

“Same thing you said the other time,” Zlatan noted, offering the bait. He waited a few minutes, his head ostentatiously cocked to listen at some muffled shouts outside of the tent, to see if Filippo would take it, When Filippo failed to, Zlatan shrugged and put out a hand to the table, where he picked up one side of what appeared to be a letter. He frowned slightly as he glanced over it. “Still, he’s blaming you. And you running off doesn’t look good—we’re just lucky that the two of your men who didn’t make it back apparently died somewhere the French couldn’t get to them.”

“Even if they had, they wouldn’t have found anything on the bodies to have helped.” The water was a little warm, but it dealt with the parched feeling in Filippo’s throat. He sipped slowly at it.

Zlatan snorted, then looked incredulously at Filippo over the top of the letter. “You think? You’re funny, you know…you assume the French would’ve only gotten bodies. But never mind—it didn’t happen, and I don’t have to deal with you being too subtle again.”

“Do you want me to go?” Filippo asked.

Then an officer walked in—Zlatan’s eyes went to Filippo, then snapped to the side a second before the tent flap rustled. He rose to deal with the matter and Filippo spent those few minutes reviewing the mail from Milan, which was surprisingly free of problems. The nobles were on the whole supportive, possibly because they now realized Louis was out for nothing but his own gain, and wouldn’t listen to their grievances any more than he would Paolo’s. Also some of the other Italian city-states were beginning to respond to diplomatic overtures, though that was more motivated by their fear of Louis’ ally Cesare Borgia, and the fact that Nesta and Zlatan so far had been the only generals able to sustain resistance against him.

“I wish the French would take this a little more seriously. What are they doing, stopping for a snowball fight every night?” Zlatan muttered, returning to his seat. “The hardest damn part is keeping the men from getting too bored right now. Oh, Savoy’s sent another message.”

So Filippo was staying, and handling all the meetings Zlatan so vocally hated. He nodded and reached over for the paper Zlatan handed him, then looked at the seal. Then he began to read it.

“Vieri’s helping a little with that, actually. He’s asked to join, did you know? Just for the battle, but he didn’t object when I asked him to help Marco till then.” Zlatan drummed his fingers along the table, and then raised his eyebrows when Filippo looked up a little too sharply.

He and Filippo stared at each other for nearly a minute, according to the count in Filippo’s head. Then Zlatan shrugged and looked away, at the half-open tent flap and the people passing by outside.

“He mentioned he meant to do that when we returned,” Filippo finally said. “He’s not aligned with anyone, or really interested in the politics. It seems he only wants to—”

“—because that’s what he’s gotten used to doing. He’s a _condottiere_ , what else is he supposed to do? And what, forty or so now? He’s probably got too many scars, injured himself too much to be good for most other trades—God’s _balls_.”

Then Zlatan shut his mouth. Both of them looked at the paper Filippo had just crumpled in his hand. About equally surprised, Filippo thought, and then inclined his head so he would have to look at Zlatan as he carefully loosened his fingers. He smoothed out the sheet of paper on his knee, and then against the table; part of its side had ripped and he couldn’t help letting his fingers linger at the tear.

“So.” Zlatan’s brows jumped, then settled back to their accustomed place. He put down the penknife and laid his fingers over it. “You know, he asked about you too. How long you’d been working for Paolo, what you do for me. I thought that was a little odd.”

Filippo didn’t feel a muscle in his face twitch, but on this occasion he wasn’t certain that that helped hide anything. “Are you bored? I know you don’t like me, but I don’t see the point of you keeping me here to tease, in that case. I don’t react the way you want to and I don’t like you either.”

“I know,” Zlatan said. His jaw dropped in something like a smile, except his eyes were too grim and hard. He started to roll his fingers back and forth over the pen. “And that’s funny, too, if you think about it. I should like you, if only because you _care_ about Milan, not about what you can get out of it. Except you don’t care about Milan. Not really. You care about this Milan that’s not—it’s the lake in the desert that’s not actually there.”

“Right now it isn’t. You can’t speak about the future before it arrives.” But Filippo had still not completely regained his composure and spoke a little too soon. He had to draw a breath before he could finish.

Of course Zlatan didn’t miss the opportunity. “No, but look, this…I have this problem with Paolo. He thinks he _is_ Milan, these days. He’s not—he’s _Milan’s_ , and also he’s a man, but he keeps forgetting that second part. And you—I think I dislike you most because you’re one of those people who’ll never remind him about that. You can’t even remember it about yourself. That’s what irritates Vieri about you, you know.”

Filippo flicked down the paper. Or his intention was to let it fall to the table, as he could feel his temper fraying again and if he couldn’t hide it, he could at least minimize it. But he moved his hand too quickly, and so the sheet skittered over the table and was on its way over the other side before Zlatan snatched it out of the air.

Then Zlatan pulled it up and looked at the letter, twisting it this way and that. He pursed his lips, smiled, and then looked back up at Filippo. “Don’t look so surprised. I have trouble with you, but I don’t have any with him. I told him about you, and then I said I’d be happy to have him in the ranks as long as he followed orders. He’ll do that for the battle.”

“How do you think that’ll go?” Filippo asked after a long moment. He dug his nails into the table. “The battle.”

“Given the cannon you say Louis’ having shipped to him? Bloody. Bloody, long, and not so much about tactics as about who’s willing to suffer the most for what they want.” Zlatan grimaced, then leaned back in his chair to stare at the ceiling. Once he lifted his hand to rub at his nose, but he left his hair falling into his eyes. “One thing I’m not sure about—I’m not sure Vieri thinks about past the next battle, these days. He doesn’t have a reason to, or else he would’ve stayed in retirement.”

When Filippo lifted his fingers, he found he’d left little crescent scars in the wood. He touched one, then curled his fingers back. Then he pulled his hands off the table. “Why are you worrying about that? You’re not doing this for him.”

“I’m not,” Zlatan muttered. He tipped his head enough to meet Filippo’s eye, then flapped a dismissive hand. “I don’t have the time to, and anyway, it’s not my job to worry about people like him. It’s yours. I was just telling you, and now that I’ve done that, I’m not going to think about it anymore.”

They sat there for a few minutes, while men shouted and horses neighed, and somewhere a pig was slaughtered with a screaming squeal. Then Zlatan stirred, twisting about in that direction. As he turned back, he picked up yet another letter, this one from Rome, and began to discuss it with Filippo. They weren’t quite done with the actual business at hand, it seemed.

* * *

Louis was, predictably, allowed to cross Savoy without harassment. He sent one message mentioning Filippo and Zlatan sent one back that Filippo dressed up more politely, but that still essentially said Filippo had sensibly made sure he’d gotten back alive and without any body parts missing so Zlatan didn’t know why Louis thought that was odd. After that, Louis didn’t bother sending messages to them. He did continue to contact the other city-states so they had those messages secondhand, but so far it seemed as if Louis and Paolo were evenly matched in terms of their ability to win over potential allies.

Once or twice Filippo caught a glimpse of Vieri around the camp. He was inclined to think that that was mostly Vieri’s doing, since he was in fact trying to avoid the man. Everyone knew now that a battle was unavoidable, but that paradoxically increased the amount of negotiating Filippo had to do and he didn’t want his distraction to result in a fatal error. The consequences were too high.

And then Louis was only a day away and Zlatan ordered the camp to pack up and get ready to march. They’d fight the next day, one way or the other, and Zlatan wanted to ensure that it’d be his way.

During such times Filippo always made sure to stay out of the way, knowing his limitations. He was deep in the baggage train and straightening up from checking that the chests of official documents were properly tied down to a wagon bed when a hand grabbed his arm. Then it spun him, and he just had a dagger free of his boot and up to Vieri’s ribs when the man savagely kissed him.

A moment later Vieri had hopped off the end of the wagon, leaving Filippo slackly cramped into the small space where the last chest was supposed to go. The man rubbed once at the fresh scratch on his coat, snorting, and then looked up at Filippo.

“You look about five, six years younger when you sleep, you know,” he said. He showed his palm—clean, and Filippo was so relieved he let the dagger slip to clatter against the wagon’s floorboards—and then turned to go. “It’s not like I don’t know what it’s like to not be able to do what you want. That’s why I’m here…but at least I go get what I need.” His step slightly slowed. “Now I need to go kill somebody who doesn’t matter.”

Then his stride lengthened, and he walked off. Nobody had been near to see the incident, but as Filippo gingerly pulled himself up, he saw some people passing by now. They all parted for Vieri, and he went through them as if he didn’t see them at all.

Filippo put his hand up to his mouth, then winced as he touched a bruised place. He paused, then laid his fingers against that spot again. And pressed down.

* * *

The baggage train was pitched far enough away so that Filippo couldn’t see the battle, even when he tried climbing up on top of a wagon. He could hear the cannon, but after the first chaotic minutes, that noise quickly settled into a thundering so constant and regular that Filippo lost track of which parts belonged to the French artillery and which to the Milanese.

In Zlatan’s absence he technically was the highest-ranking person in the camp, but there were experienced soldiers too old or too crippled to fight who oversaw everything and Filippo saw the sense in leaving them to get on with their duties. The only time he’d be needed would be if one of them decided to turn traitor or if Zlatan lost, and either way—either scenario wasn’t one Filippo was willing to even consider. He always did his work in the belief that he was creating a future victory, not that he was betting on a loss.

Filippo paused and reviewed that thought again, then winced for the…third time in as many minutes. He had walked about to check in with all the officers and to see that the general state of the skeleton guard was fine, and now he was continuing to walk about in circles because for once, he had nothing else to do. Not till the battle was over, and he didn’t—he couldn’t do anything more about that, either.

Inaction didn’t suit him either, he thought, and kept walking.

The sun inched across the blazing blue vault of the sky. It marked off an hour, and was well into describing the second when Filippo stopped to stare at a horse. At first he couldn’t place it, but then he could—he flinched, so that he actually stumbled backwards a bit, and then jerked up a hand to push at his temple. His head was aching and it seemed like his vision was swimming for a few moments.

Then Filippo gave himself a shake and ducked into the tent by which the horse—the winnings Vieri had been collecting the second time they’d met—was tied. He looked about the place without really seeing the details, then looked again. Then he made himself walk around, picking up this and examining that, and though he was paying attention, whatever he’d learned flew out of his head the moment he moved on.

He couldn’t see the sun anymore, so he didn’t know how long it had been. Filippo vaguely recognized that the noises filtering in from outside had changed, both in kind and in volume, but didn’t give them any thought. He couldn’t, really.

His headache got worse, and then he began to get dizzy. The tent was too small, but Filippo stayed in it and merely continued on till he ran into the bed. Then he sat on that for a moment, or at least he planned for it to be a moment, but when he sat, his feet and calves and thighs immediately flared up in pain. So he remained on the bed. The walls of the tent seemed to shake alarmingly, but then Filippo blinked and the jittery motion stopped. Then it started again and he understood that it was his dizziness increasing in intensity.

He put his hands down on the mattress, then twisted at the waist to lean down till he could rest on his forearms. That seemed to help, so Filippo began to sit up again only to feel his stomach convulse. He fell back onto his arms, then slipped further to grind the back of his hand against his mouth, trying to fight it down.

A slapping sound, so sharp that it seemed to come from right beside Filippo’s ear. He started and lost his balance, rolling over onto his side so he was facing the entrance.

Vieri was standing there, his hand still holding up the tent-flap. He stared at Filippo, his hair streaked in an oddly delicate pink that shaded into the blood slowly dripping down one side of his face. Up to his knees was a solid mat of drying gore, and then wide swaths led further upwards to his slashed shirt, roughly bandaged arm. His coat was gone.

Filippo inhaled so quickly the breath burned his throat. He hadn’t finished exhaling when sleep suddenly snatched him away.

* * *

It was night, and they were in a tent, but not in the same place. The moonlight was shining through the seams of the tent from the wrong direction for that. Filippo tried to push himself over so he could pull his arm out from under him and rub at his eyes to clear them, but found that something heavy was stretched over his back. He paused and the solid warm lump running all the way down his left side intruded into his consciousness. Then Filippo turned his head.

“You are the most frightening man I’ve ever met sometimes. You smiled at me like a baby and fell over. I thought I’d gotten through the fucking battle but now I had to go pick one with Paolo and Zlatan.”

Filippo blinked once, hard, so his sight would fully sharpen. Then he twisted over onto his side and pulled at his arms again, and when they were free, he lifted his hands to cup the other man’s face. “Christian.”

Christian started to say more, but then rolled his eyes. He was still doing that when Filippo tugged his head forward and pressed their lips together. So for the first moment his mouth was open but slack, but then he dove into it. His hands came around Filippo’s waist, then kneaded roughly up Filippo’s back; his breath abruptly quickened and his mouth came down on Filippo’s like a storm sweeping down out of the mountains.

Then he ripped himself away, and leaned back to stare at Filippo. “When’s the last time you slept?” he asked, voice raspy. His breath was still coming too quickly, and his hands were trembling on Filippo’s shoulders. He noticed and looked at them with a vicious frustration, then jerked his head back to meet Filippo’s eyes. “God damn it, you’re—”

“I don’t break,” Filippo said, a touch irritated. He was more so when, after a startled moment, Christian chuckled at him. “I’ve seen what comes after a battle.”

“Oh?” Christian pressed his fingers into the backs of Filippo’s shoulders, till the heat of them began to raise the sweat from Filippo’s skin. He’d cleaned the blood off of himself, so now Filippo could see…Filippo moved his fingers a little, so they weren’t touching the stitches over Christian’s eyebrow, and Christian’s hands steadied. Began to stroke at the side of Filippo’s neck, and then to pull at it. “Well, no. You don’t.”

He had more to say, but Filippo pushed forward and stopped up his mouth. For a moment Christian was careful, but then his hands dropped to Filippo’s shoulders and clenched there like the man was still gripping his sword.

They loosened their clothes only as much as they needed to. Filippo somehow tossed off a boot as he struggled with his doublet, but Christian’s bootheels left long, gritty streaks on the sheets that smeared over Filippo’s thighs as he lifted his hips to help the other man deal with his hose. More dirt was in Christian’s hair, collecting under Filippo’s nails as he slid his fingers through the strands, and sometimes Filippo’s mouth would slide from the salty-sweet taste of skin to something even sweeter, sharper, like copper filings mixed in honey. The taste there flaked up onto Filippo’s tongue and then dissolved before he could turn his head to spit them out.

He had a hand against Christian’s chest at one point, when he had that taste in his mouth, and through it he could feel a noise rumbling deep in the other man, so deep Filippo couldn’t tell if it was amusement or rage or something else. But then Christian turned his head into the side of Filippo’s neck, and his palms ground down on Filippo, hot as branding irons and demanding all Filippo’s attention. There wasn’t any room to consider the meaning of what they might be doing, the meaning of—any meaning.

There was a hissing in Filippo’s ear. A string of curses, and maybe a few intermixed prayers, and the solidity of Christian’s body between his hands shivering violently to pieces. A thick ridge of scar tissue beneath his fingers as he pulled at the back of Christian’s neck, dug in with his nails, and the shared taste of drying blood as Filippo twisted his head about and Christian lifted his till they were matched to each other.

Afterward, Filippo slept again, deep and restful. He thought Christian did as well, though when he woke, the other man was already gone. He sat on the cot and looked at the soiled, tangled sheets for several minutes instead of making ready for the day’s work, and then Christian came back in.

“Breakfast,” he said tersely, and tossed Filippo a hunk of bread.

Filippo looked at it, and then looked at Christian, who now was laughing quietly as he moved around the tent. Then he put the bread to his mouth and bit off a generous mouthful. He was hungry.

* * *

Louis lost that battle, but stayed on into the fall to lose another two major ones—and countless minor scuffles—before he finally sued for negotiations. For that, Paolo himself had to come to Novara.

“Under no circumstances are we allowing him over Milanese lands. We’ve fought to protect them from invasion and that is where we stand,” Paolo said.

Filippo remained silent, unsure if the other man had more to say. It seemed so, since Paolo had stayed upright with his eyes fixed on Filippo, and then Paolo went so far as to part his lips. But instead of words came a sharp cough that had him jerking his head about to muffle the sound with his hand.

“If he wants to go on to Naples, he can pay the Genoese to take him there,” Zlatan said. His tone was a good deal less acerbic than would have been expected, and his gaze followed the movements of Paolo’s hand.

“I’d rather he went back over the mountains, and concerned himself with his own lands.” Paolo wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, then sat back as if nothing had happened. He raised his eyebrows at the sharp glance Zlatan gave him. “What happens in Naples still matters to us.”

“That’s nice of you, but I’m not defending the entire peninsula.” After a moment, Zlatan threw himself back into his chair, then let his body sink so his head was nearly resting on the chair-top. “Paolo, I _can’t_ , all right? Even I can’t do it. And I don’t see—”

The slightest movement of Paolo’s hand brought a stop to Zlatan’s words, but for several moments afterward, the two men continued the argument in their stares. Zlatan’s mouth thinned and he slowly began to draw himself up again, till he could put one arm on the table around which they were all seated and leaned forward on it. Then Paolo dipped his head, but didn’t sever their gazes.

“This is what happened last time,” Paolo said quietly. “The League stopped Charles, but then we all went our separate ways. Every time we divide, we leave the door open for an outsider to come in and strike at all of us.”

“That’s nice of you.” Zlatan blinked. He meant it as a deliberate action, to judge from the way Paolo almost flinched. “But I don’t think everyone else is going to agree with you. It’s no good if you’re the only one who wants to stand together.”

Filippo finally raised his hand. He kept it in the air long enough to have both the other men’s attention, then quietly slid it back into his lap with the other. “Louis is willing to retreat from here. We’ve forced him to that point. But unless you want to invade France, or to kill him before he returns there, you can’t keep him from bringing his army into Italy another way.”

“We can invade France, but we can’t get back out,” Zlatan flatly told Paolo. “Not alive.”

And assassinating Louis wasn’t a possibility when he still had the Pope and the Pope’s threat of excommunication on his side. Paolo knew that, and furthermore, probably knew the best of them how the idea of…of some sort of lasting union, if Filippo was hearing him correctly…would be taken by the other Italian city-states.

Frowning, Paolo slowly eased himself back into his chair. He gazed for a long time at a point just to the left of Zlatan, the planes of his face conveying no emotion in particular—except when his cheeks twitched a bare second before another cough, and then a flicker of concern passed through his eyes. Zlatan’s brows knit together as he watched that.

“Keep him out of Milan. Make him go by sea, at least—he’s already deep in debt and perhaps the Genoese will charge him too much.” Although Paolo hardly looked optimistic as he rose to his feet. He spared a last look for Filippo. “Then start working on a new league against the French. If Louis has to land, then he can land. But if he does any more than that, and then I think things will change in our favor.”

Zlatan remained seated, but Filippo took his cue and was on his feet when someone knocked at the door. Then they opened it while Paolo was still asking who it was; Zlatan’s hand slapped down on the arm of his chair and he half-rose before he saw who it was. Then he dropped back, grimacing first in annoyance and then in pain as his hand drifted beneath his unfastened doublet.

“You look about the same, actually,” Christian said to Paolo. He shifted his feet so he could lean against the door. After the initial flick up and down Paolo, his eyes stayed on the other man’s face. “Does Sandro look like less of a girl now? That was the last I saw of you two, trying to sneak into that cardinal’s party.”

Paolo had had his mouth open, but now he closed it. He nearly dropped his chin, but Zlatan badly suppressed a startled noise and Paolo changed his mind about that, and squarely met Christian’s gaze. “You can meet him if you want, and see for yourself.”

“No, I was wrong a moment ago. You look like a duke.” Christian drummed his fingers against the door, his gaze wandering about the room. It touched on Zlatan’s silently shaking shoulders, flitted over Filippo and then came back to Paolo. Then Christian sighed, a touch of wryness pulling at the corners of his mouth. “If I have to be Il Mostro to see, then I don’t care that much what Sandro’s like now.”

“Who are you being now?” Paolo asked, brow furrowing.

“Me,” Christian said after a moment. He shrugged, then pushed himself off the door. “Christian. When I’m tired of that too, I’ll go back to being nobody. And I just wanted to see what you were like, and I’m done with that now. If you have to talk to me, you can ask Pippo where I am.”

He went back out the door. Filippo crossed the room in time to see Christian’s back disappearing around a corner, but he paused with his foot over the threshold. Then he twisted around to find Paolo shaking his head, already turning away himself.

“Let him go,” Paolo said. “Let him…thank you, Filippo.”

It was meant less in gratitude than in dismissal, though of course Paolo was genuinely appreciative. But for the moment Filippo wasn’t particularly interested in the nuances of the gesture, and so he merely made his bow and went out. Then he pivoted around and pulled the door shut as Paolo bent over Zlatan, one hand slipping along Zlatan’s arm to where it disappeared under the man’s doublet. In the last battle Zlatan had taken a cut from a lance along that side.

When Filippo caught up with Christian, the other man was well on his way out the door. He did turn to see Filippo, but he didn’t slow as he stepped out into the courtyard.

“My brother—my family actually calls me that. The Duke knew who you were talking about.” As Christian stopped and twisted sharply about, Filippo slid across to his other side to avoid Larsson, who was walking in the opposite direction. Filippo and Larsson nodded to each other, and then Larsson went inside while Filippo caught up on his breath.

“I was guessing, actually. I didn’t know that.” Christian looked up at the windows of the second floor, squinting a little because of the way the sunlight glittered off the panes. He absently passed one hand over the top of his head, then brought it down to push at his temple. “Damn. Paolo must be feeling smug about that.”

“He’s not that way very often.” ‘Not now’ almost slipped out, but in the end Filippo retained it, since he hadn’t enough knowledge of Paolo before the man had become Duke to speak on that.

Christian glanced at him again, and then turned to look properly at Filippo. His eyes were still narrowed, as if any light pained them. “I suppose not…he looks more serious than I remember.”

Someone came out and Christian failed to move out of the way, so the man walked around him. Then a group of officers came in through the courtyard gate, and went over to the door, and they had to round Christian as well, as if he were a boulder dividing a stream. He continued to look at Filippo, though it hardly looked as if he were enjoying the sight.

“What did you mean, I’d know where you were?” Filippo finally said, when the courtyard was empty again. He twisted his fingers up into fists, and then bent his fists so his knuckles scraped his hips.

“That you’d know where I was. Because I don’t know where I’m going to be. I just go, these days.” A flicker of amusement went through Christian’s eyes. “The _where_ isn’t important to me.”

Filippo pressed his lips together so long and so hard that when he parted them, it hurt a little. “It might be to me.”

Oddly enough, Christian didn’t laugh, or even look as if he found that humorous. He should have—the reversal was there in plain sight—but instead that spark of amusement went completely out of his eyes. He hunched his shoulders and leaned forward, throwing his shadow over and around Filippo. He had one hand around the wrist of the other now, and he slowly twisted his fingers about the joint as he looked at Filippo.

“So where are we going?” Christian asked.

After a moment, Filippo shook his head and glanced down at the ground. Then he looked back at Christian, who already was letting impatience creep into his expression, and started to say one thing. But it was foolish and he thankfully stopped himself in time. He rubbed at the side of his face. “I don’t know yet. I need to go—I need to do some work.”

“So tell me when you’re…never mind, you never are. Tell me when I make you eat dinner,” Christian said. Then he turned towards the gate.

He stopped and looked surprised when Filippo began to walk with him. Filippo shrugged, still rubbing at his temple. “I might as well eat now. Zlatan and the Duke will be too busy to speak to me for the rest of the day, and I can’t do more till I see them again.”

Christian smiled. Then he laughed, letting his head rock back with the sound, and then his arm suddenly swung over Filippo’s shoulders. It trapped Filippo’s hand against his head so he accidentally scratched himself, and then when he tried to pull that down, Christian wouldn’t let him. The other man instead tugged him closer, till Christian was leaning so heavily on him that Filippo could feel his one foot sinking down deeper than the other into the dirt.

“You’re not going to eat. You’re going to sit there and poke at your food and watch me eat,” Christian snorted. “Well, you do that, then. It doesn’t frighten me.”

“I know.” Filippo heard his voice tremble, and then blinked when the tremor bloomed into a laugh. “I know.”

So he left his hand up, stuck between his neck and Christian’s arm, as they walked down the road together.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve slightly delayed the 1494 French invasion of Italy by Charles VIII to early in 1495 and in the story made other changes as to Milan’s role during that, but otherwise that campaign went as history recorded it. For more historical resources, see the Introduction.


End file.
